Harvest time.....
Aug. 19th, 2018 01:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osodecanelaWith all the work I’ve been doing clearing brush, the time to take the fruit from the garden snuck up on me. I have a watering regimen daily, where I make the rounds of the potted plants, as well as the young fruit trees each morning , and for some of them, again in the afternoon. Would drip irrigation be easier? Sure, but that’s money I don’t want to spend right now, nor do I wish to irritate my husband, who still has a sour taste in his mouth from my last and only attempt at setting up a drip system over a decade ago. I dropped a couple of bills rigging up a watering system under our front deck leading to a string of 25 gallon pots across the front of the deck, affectionately referred to as the pot farm. The goal then wasn’t cannabis, but heirloom tomatoes. Sadly, it was money thrown away. Under the shade of the redwoods, the yield was dismal. In any event, walking the watering path is exercise, and takes about 20 minutes twice a day.
Initially, this was to be my project, but recently, he’s been getting up at around 6 and gets both the watering done and the dog walked, before I come to. It’s been almost a week since I got the watering done. This morning when I visited the peach trees, the older one, covered in too many fruit (thinning the crop on that tree got away from me), I found that almost 1/2 of the tiny peaches are now ripe. Sweet, white, juicy, and the size of apricots. Time to pick.
A couple of hours later, I went out with a basket, and took off almost 3 dozen. The I cruised along the grape arbor gathering bunches of Thompson’s, and a lot of a smaller green seeded grape, that’s both very sweet and aromatic. It took some juggling, (3D Tetris actually, buy I did manage to get it all into the fridge. There’s now a bumper crop of fruit in the house, as Tom and I stopped at the fruit, stand on the way back from the airport when he arrived last weekend. Fruit is now dessert after every meal.
Except b’fast. There it’s the main course.
Tom’s visit was timely. I’ve got a bunch of manzanita that needed dead wood pulled off them. It’s pretty stuff, quite hard and heavy. Just putting it into the green waste troubled me. Well, Tom’s the proud pet parent of a ruby macaw & took me over to Etsy, to check out the manzanita bird perches people sell there. Yesterday, I trimmed dead wood; today much of that pile has been transformed in to perches, swings and bird toys. Not going to make me rich, but it sure as hell beats cutting it up into the green waste. Further small branches are apparently popular for wedding decorations. Tomorrow I list stuff on eBay, and set up my own Etsy store. We’ll see how well these sell.
Initially, this was to be my project, but recently, he’s been getting up at around 6 and gets both the watering done and the dog walked, before I come to. It’s been almost a week since I got the watering done. This morning when I visited the peach trees, the older one, covered in too many fruit (thinning the crop on that tree got away from me), I found that almost 1/2 of the tiny peaches are now ripe. Sweet, white, juicy, and the size of apricots. Time to pick.
A couple of hours later, I went out with a basket, and took off almost 3 dozen. The I cruised along the grape arbor gathering bunches of Thompson’s, and a lot of a smaller green seeded grape, that’s both very sweet and aromatic. It took some juggling, (3D Tetris actually, buy I did manage to get it all into the fridge. There’s now a bumper crop of fruit in the house, as Tom and I stopped at the fruit, stand on the way back from the airport when he arrived last weekend. Fruit is now dessert after every meal.
Except b’fast. There it’s the main course.
Tom’s visit was timely. I’ve got a bunch of manzanita that needed dead wood pulled off them. It’s pretty stuff, quite hard and heavy. Just putting it into the green waste troubled me. Well, Tom’s the proud pet parent of a ruby macaw & took me over to Etsy, to check out the manzanita bird perches people sell there. Yesterday, I trimmed dead wood; today much of that pile has been transformed in to perches, swings and bird toys. Not going to make me rich, but it sure as hell beats cutting it up into the green waste. Further small branches are apparently popular for wedding decorations. Tomorrow I list stuff on eBay, and set up my own Etsy store. We’ll see how well these sell.
