Ben spent Father's Day borrowing my uncle's trailer and fetching the water barrels from the property to be refilled and relocated back on the property. I hadn't seen the place in at least a month, since the carpenter bees declared the barn their territory and I took them at their word and high tailed it out of there. Since then the bees have been exterminated so I returned and spring has come full force to our neck of the woods (though it's June and actually summer). And all the bare-root saplings we so tenderly planted and pruned to 3' stalks 4 months ago are now standing 6' tall with golf ball sized fruit hanging from the top branches. The blackberry bushes have also grown leaps and bounds and we are now firmly in its menacing choke-hold. It's deepest and highest on the south side of the barn, the entire access road up the property and to the north of the 6' section of new orchard we planted. It's simply amazing how wild the place still is and how with just a few months of rain and a couple weeks of sunshine the place looks undisturbed for years.
I took in the wildflowers growing between and beyond the newly staked vines with awe and admiration as well as a sinking feeling for how much work it is going to be just to keep this place from utter savageness in a year's time.
On the other hand, the vines are growing fast where they aren't choked by weeds and tall grasses. We are going to need to devise a good strategy for protecting these yummy shoots from the deer very soon. Once it gets hotter and drier they are going to be a tasty snack!
And while the young orchard trees stand a mere 6' tall and the birds are eating the fruit as fast as it arrives, the old apple orchard just beside it are behemoths to behold. They stand about 26' tall and the same wide, each packed with foliage and undisturbed fruit. There are some quirks in those old trees. A couple carry multiple varieties of apples which we will have to wait for the fruit to ripen to determine their names and some are oddly only producing on a single side--the downslope, south-facing side. We can only guess that means the frost did work some damage on the trees this year though our saplings seem to be unscathed. Either the land was just slightly more favorable to frost where these old trees stand or our new trees hadn't started to bud as early. It's possible it was a combination of both. In any case, Gi had a great time meandering through the old orchard path with her Papa.
Here, Gi inspects a fat bumble bee near one of the new apple trees in the orchard. For now, bees are not of the same scary classification as ants and spiders in her mind. All it will take is her first sting to set her straight!
I took in the wildflowers growing between and beyond the newly staked vines with awe and admiration as well as a sinking feeling for how much work it is going to be just to keep this place from utter savageness in a year's time.
