Growing Season

Last night there was a beautiful sun set in out neck of the woods.  We were exhausted from mowing the yard.  I push mowed the *long* driveway ditches, making sure to avoid the Killdeer nest, and the sand mound since it is pretty steep.

Both mowings tag teamed to kick my butt!  I will admit this first mowing of the season has been the most exercise I have gotten since our last big snow fall.  Not to worry, I will be getting lots of activity as we will be plowing, rotatilling, planting, and all to soon enough weeding lots of ground and tanks.
Things are starting to come alive around these here parts.  The trees are starting to leaf out and bloom.

My fruit orchard is starting to bloom.

The apple trees are just starting to bud up and bloom:

The peach is about done:

The Nectarine is in full bloom.  I love this tree.  We have yet to get any fruit from it, but the leaves smell like nectarines and send a sweet wonderful sent through the summer air.

The Plum is going strong:

As is the small Sour Cherry is just crazy full of blossoms!

The pear tree is blooming nicely as well.  We have two pear trees but the other one has not bloomed since we planted it.  It is healthy and growing well.  We will be pruning it back this year to see if that will spark it to bloom next year.  You have to have 2 pear trees to get the correct pollination.

The Sweet Cherry Varieties are at the end of their bloom.  Hopefully the frost will stay at bay and we can get some fruit this year.

We have a cage of wire around each tree to keep the deer off of them.  The deer love cherry trees and did a lot of damage to them our second year.  We want to fence in the whole area with one fence instead of each tree.  Some day we will get around to doing that.

I also have to rhubarb patches.  This rhubarb is very old....probably at least 45-50 years old.  I remember as a little girl pulling a stalk from my Granny's rhubarb and chewing it right up - eating it like a stalk of celery.  About 14 years ago my Dad had gotten me some divisions of my Granny's rhubarb that I loved so much as a child.  I planted these divisions and tended them to make sure they would grow.  The did indeed grow and flourished!  My in-laws wanted some, so we divided my stalk and I shared mine with my Father in Law and Brother in Law.  We check on the plants we put in at FILs to make sure they are doing well and they are.  My BIL did a great job at tending the divisions we gave him and they really took off!  When BIL passed away - SIL his widow said we could have the rhubarb plants back as she did not want them.  We dug them up and from the 4 divisions I had gave BIL a few years back - he turned them into 11 plants!  We dug up a plot of land and fortified it with about 1200 pounds of top soil, peat, and compost.  I planted each of the plants that we got from BIL and said a prayer that they would grow.  Sure enough they all came up this spring and are growing like crazy!

Now I will have rhubarb out the ears this year!  We will harvest only a little bit of the newly planted stuff this year to give the roots the nourishment that the leaves give it.  We will harvest it next year.  In the mean time I still have the first patch that I can harvest to my hearts desire.  That patch also has 11 plants in it.  That patch is not in a good spot so the rhubarb is a bit spindly - we may move it this fall over to this long patch.

This is the second year for us growing garlic.  We bought bulbs to grow last year and they did pretty good.  We saved all of the bulbs we got last year and planted the cloves again in the late fall.  Said another prayer that they would come up.  Sure enough they did!  I think we can actually use some of these this year but will keep the best ones for next fall's plantings.  Why we are growing garlic I have no idea.  I do not like garlic at all...ick!  However Dear Husband wanted to plant some so we did.

The Blueberries are starting to bloom and leaf out as well.  The red raspberries are starting to come up as well.  The black berries have not made their arrival yet.  There will be lots to do here pretty quick with planting and weeding.