Garden Follow Up

As noted previously, we have been blessed recently with a lot of fruit. If you want it come pick it or let John know you are coming and he may pick some for you. We have a lot of it. You will have to fight the birds for the Peaches. It would appear that they like those much more than the apricots because with the 2 right next to each other they have left the apricots alone for the most part.

Little did we realize just how blessed we are until John went out and started looking a little closer on Friday afternoon while Bella was visiting. He was trying to talk her into eating from the tree, but she wasn't having much to do with it for a while. She may still think if fruit doesn't come from the store it can't be very good. John plucks fruit every morning to eat on the way to work. You can see he will have choices for quite some time...
Above are the Peach and Apricot mentioned before.

Here are the Plum trees. The first one has put out fruit the last two years but it was never worth bragging about. Hopefully they get a bit bigger this year than years previous. This is the first year the other two have done anything and pretty much what you see is what you get with them, but we’re glad they’re putting fruit out because John was ready to pull them out of the ground if they didn’t give fruit.

Here is a picture of our Apple Tree. Rosie has volunteered her Mum to come and make some Crumble with the apples. Now just to get her here :). This tree is one of the youngest trees in the backyard and this is the first year for it to provide fruit and it’s already doing very well.

The Lemon tree is doing about what it does every year which is about as much as we really need. You can see some of last years growth as well as what will ripen for us later this year.

We’re please to see that the Navel Orange has some fruit on it that will mature through the year as well. John has planted a few of these and this is the first to grow and put on fruit. Hopefully they will make it that far. John’s Dad used to have a Navel Orange tree years ago that only put fruit on one year and they got plucked by a little boy that his Mom watched and it never put out fruit again. Funny story in retrospect, but it wasn’t at the time. Possible future blog.

Then we have the Pomegranate shrub. I think they are considered shrub and at least that is what this one is looking like.  It has a few fruit blooming and one has turned green and looks like fruit.  Trouble is Buddy likes to pluck them while they're red blossoms so we'll see what we get.  Should at least get the one green one he didn't get at.

We should mention the 2 sunflowers that sprung up from seeds dropped last year. John plans to plant some more this week. They are supposed to get about 6’ tall but these appear to have topped out at ~2’.

Lastly we have the grapevines. John has planted a few of these in the past and these are the first to actually grow and now are even putting out a few bunches.

John needs to spend a little time getting them back under control again, but we’re just happy to see fruit on them. We’re hoping some time in the near future to get some blackberry and raspberry bushes to grow but the times John has tried to get them to grow either the grub worms have gotten to them or they have died for other reasons. One time he got them to grow at his parent’s house but only got fruit off of the raspberries one year and never again after that.

If anybody knows someone who can help him we would really appreciate the help!

For the Love of Aunt Rosie

I think everyone understands on this Mother's Day what a wonderful mother Rosie would make based on the way she is around children and certainly the way children (especially nieces and nephews) are with Rosie. That said, I don't think any of her nieces, or nephews for that matter, feel about Aunt Rosie the way that Bella does.  Nobody comes between Bella and her Auntie Rosie.  And now we have a great example of not only that love, but Bella shows herself to be mature beyond her years and yet still 5 years old.  Listen to the 2 messages that wee Bella left for her Aunt Rosie:
http://sites.google.com/site/intheqc/our-music

Our Cup Runneth Over

If anyone wants peaches or apricots you won't have to buy them if you can beat the birds to them.
Both trees have decided to go nuts this year and the plum tree is giving out more fruit this year than we have ever seen.  Even the apple tree has decided to get into the act a bit this year.

John spent much of the day picking off excessive fruuit and cutting out bent limbs.

You can see all the fruit on the ground that he plucked from teh limbs as well as some of the limbs that had to be cut and still the tree has more fruit than we'll be able to keep up with.
And that is just the Peach tree.  The Apricot tree had on large limb that had to be lopped off because their was too much fruit and the limb was laying on the ground.

 

Today was a really warm day in the QC and John decided it was time to put out Buddy's pool again. after it appeared he was having trouble cooling down on his own while John was out mowing the lawn and Buddy was chasing flying bugs.

We didn't get a picture of Buddy in the pool but you can definitely tell he has been there and that he was badly in need of a bath.  He jumped in and lay down in the water as soon as John put the hose in the pool.

All the green grass is about dead and the Bermuda grass is just starting come up.  The transition is a bit frustrating until the grass is green again.