Pictoral Orchard Update

For years Troy has promised his fruit trees would overrun us with fruit. Hasn't happened yet, but this may be the year the trees make him an honest man:

Blueberries:

This was a bush he got at Menards this spring. He's working on propagating some bushes on his own, but they won't be bearing fruit for a while.

Honeycrisp apples:

The other apples that I never remember:

Peaches:

Crabapples:

(First year they've produced any fruit too.)

Plums:

Columnar apple variety:

Pears:

If you're wondering what all that white stuff is on the trees, it's a very fine clay Troy sprays on the trees (with water) to deter bugs.

And the bees have been happy too:

A Little Disaster, A Little Tiling

I have kept myself fairly busy this weekend. A lot of sewing, I have to admit, but I put today aside for "house" work and wood. I split wood for a while this morning before it got too, too hot and while the splitter was in the shade. I am making good progress on the last rack.

When I couldn't take it anymore, I went in and (after some recovery) decided I could tackle the marble tile on the island. I wasn't committing to cutting the tiles at the north end (too much set up...I couldn't even think about it), but I thought I could at least get it started. And that's what I did.

First I took out the sink so that I wouldn't damage it. (And just in case I went crazy and did manage to cut the tile to fit around the hole.) Then I started to remove tiles and lay them in the foyer so I could finalize the layout. I removed tiles from the west side and as I got most of them removed, the weight of the tiles on the overhanging edge made the whole counter tip up and dump the remaining tiles on the floor!! Aaahhhh....quelle disastre!!

Fortunately nothing landed hard on my toes, but I did lose two of the three tiles that fell. (I think I managed to hang on to one of them.)

On the bright side, I have some tiles I can practice my cutting on to see if it's any different than cutting porcelain and I have some smaller pieces in case I need to bring a colour sample to match something. Yes, let's look for silver linings.

The real silver lining is that I still had enough tiles with four good clean corners (I have quite a number with one damaged corner) with one left over so I felt like I had some choice of which pieces to use.

I went and found Troy and pulled him in from the field where he was discing (or something) in his little field. He was gracious enough to come in right away and fasten down the counter. Once that was done, I dove in.

I got the nine tiles in the main part put in and that's about where I ran out of energy and ran out of tile adhesive. So that was it for the day.

I was worried about getting all the corners to match but I think I did pretty well. I was also worried about matching the height of the tiles because they're quite uneven. That was not quite a successful, but will have to do. We still haven't decided what we're doing about sealing the cracks. Troy is not so keen on silicone suddenly and I can't find red grout. If you have any suggestions, let me know!

Troy has not been doing too much in the kitchen since spring has sprung and he felt the pressure of working on his garden.

On the good side, it is looking wonderful this year. So neat and orderly and weed free.

He abandoned last year's pretense of "not doing a garden" and has planted lots and lots. I think it's all in the ground now. Broccoli, cauliflower, popping corn, sweet corn, meal corn, parsnips, potatoes, peas, tomatoes, mildish peppers, and maybe I've forgotten some. He's putting carrots in in July. He has been visiting the local town compost supply (from leaf collection primarily) and picking up loads in his pickup truck. Then it seems to be a race of when he can empty the load and get another one!

He also has gotten the sprinkler system up and running this year which is good with the weather we've been having...crazy hot!

Very First Fruit

After several years of carefully tending his fruit trees, Troy has gotten his very first edible fruit:

Although he offered it to me, I gave him the honor of eating it:

He said it was "average." Not exactly glowing praise. I noticed, however, that it was a free stone peach and that makes it very good for canning (which is our primary interest)...and you can always add more sugar. ;)

One of the peach trees is just loaded with fruit:

These are Harken Peaches.

The other peach tree with fruit is the Frost Peach:

They are much less red (as you can see) and do not have that irresistible sun-kissed look about them.

One apple tree (Empire) has a couple apples, but they are small and bug-spotted and don't look very appealing. I don't think we'll get any apples this year.

As for the rest of the garden, the only thing blooming now that the glads are done are the hibiscus bushes.

The pink blooms are gorgeous and huge. (Larger than my niece's face, as I told her.) This one bush has both pink blooms and white ones with a dark red center. Is that normal?

They both are putting out a incredible number of buds. You may not be able to make them all out, but this bloom, for example,

has seven more buds waiting right behind it. It's a good thing, because they don't last much more than a day once they're open.

A Taste of Spring

So first of all, nothing going on with the kitchen. After saying last fall that he was absolutely not doing a garden this year...except tomatoes and corn of course because saying you're not having a garden can't possibly mean that you do without home-grown tomatoes and corn...Troy has been working like a dog on the garden. (And I don't know about you, but I didn't believe it when he said it anyway. I mean, really.)

He resisted past his usual start time, but in the end couldn't resist adding other edibles. I can't really complain because the first thing he put in was beets which is my "because saying you're not having a garden can't possibly mean that you do without home-grown beets...they're so easy." The only problem with that is that I can't possibly eat that many beets fresh and I have no kitchen in which to can them. Houston, we have a problem. Anyone know off the top of their head if you can freeze beets? I have begun to think that I will have to do a lot more freezing this year. I'm not excited about that.

Anyway, the reason I really decided to go ahead and post something today is that some of our fruit trees are blooming. And who can resist apple and peach blossoms?

We might actually get fruit this year on four of our eight trees in the front orchard. Hmm...that will mean more canning.

Now, about that kitchen....