Resurrection

There are few things I like better than practicing subtractive sculpture on the plant kingdom.  So when the snow finally melted last week I picked up my pruning weapons--secateurs, curved folding saw, and long-handled clippers--and set out to whip my fruit trees into shape.

Normally I do this in March, but this has been a long and cruel winter.  The four apple trees and the espaliered apricot had clearly had enough, however, and decided to ignore the frigid temperatures and pay attention to the sunlight, which has been glorious, and get on with things.  The sap was running and they were full of buds, especially the apricot which is crucified against the south wall of the house.

I was amazed at how much the apple trees had grown.  If it weren't for my determination to keep them short enough to be tended by me without a ladder, they'd be fifteen feet high by now.  I hope that their new owners will appreciate picking those 13 oz. mega-apples without even having to stand on tiptoe.

Like the fruit trees, the bluebirds had had enough, and decided to forgo the courtship rituals and proceed with their nest building.  This is their third year in the little nest box by the back porch.  So far this season the male has not attacked our windows.  I'm hoping that he is finally mature enough to know which battles are worth fighting, and which are not.  I'm also hoping that a pair of bluebirds nesting right by the window will prove a selling point for our house.

All winter long I worried about the little potted fig tree that I'd bought on a hot day last summer.  The label said it could withstand temperatures down to -10F, but I was sweating through a Vermont summer that left no doubt in anybody's mind about the realities of climate change, so I didn't worry too much about below-zero nights.

By October the little tree had dropped all its leaves, although a few mummified figs, born too late to ripen, still clung to its branches.  I wrapped the tree in burlap as best I could, set it in a sheltered corner, and retreated indoors.  The snows came and came, and the temperature dropped so low that one of the hens' combs froze and fell off.  The snow weighed down the burlap and made big gaping holes in it.  I didn't think the little tree had a prayer of surviving the worst winter in decades.

After I was done pruning the other day, I unwrapped the fig and peered at it closely.  Its long skinny trunk was still upright, with a few stick-like branches projecting from it.  But it was uniformly gray and dry and dead-looking, with no sign of buds anywhere.  What had I been thinking, trying to grow figs in Vermont?


Figuring that I didn't have much to lose, I took my pruning shears and with the blade made a tiny scratch near the bottom of the trunk--and lo, there was green beneath the gray!  Bright, moist, live, figgy green!  Against all odds, the little tree had made it.

Best of all, unlike my old friends the apple trees and the espaliered apricot and the bluebirds, all of whom I will have to leave behind when we move away in June, I will bundle the brave little fig tree in the car along with Wolfie and Bisou, and take it with me to our new home.

Winter Comforts

It's getting seriously cold and snowy here, so I spent part of the day yesterday making sure the animals and plants were comfy.

The hens got special attention, since my geriatric flock is now down to six.  One disappeared mysteriously before we left for my mother's funeral, and another, who'd been looking poorly for over a year, perished when the weather turned frigid while we were gone.  (In case you're wondering, when one of our chickens dies we take the corpse out to the woods to provide some wild critter's dinner.  It's always gone by morning.)

I gave the hens some extra wood shavings for bedding, and a "poultry hot-cake"--a cylinder of high-protein food that I hang from a string so they can peck at it and be both nourished and entertained.  And, for the biggest treat of all, I defrosted some "drone brood" for them.

Drone brood, given to me by a bee-keeping friend, consists of bits of honeycomb filled with drone (hence, undesirable) larvae. The hens had never seen it before, and they exclaimed appreciatively at this sudden appearance of insects in the middle of winter.  I'm saving the rest of the brood for Christmas morning.

The four apple trees and the espaliered apricot got their winter "socks"--spirals of white plastic that I wrap around the trunk to keep the rabbits from girdling the bark.  And I wrapped the potted fig tree  in a double thickness of burlap.  The tree is supposed to withstand temperatures of -10F, but I'm not taking any chances.

Then I went to work on Wolfie and Bisou, whose needs were purely cosmetic.  I was clipping their nails, as I do every couple of weeks and, for the first time ever, I nicked the quick on one of Wolfie's. But instead of having hysterics, splattering the room with blood, and never letting me near him with the clippers again, this most tolerant of dogs merely muttered something that sounded like "wow" and let me finish the job.

When the clipping and brushing were done I rewarded the dogs with a walk in the field to eat frozen deer poop.  Speaking of deer, I really should wrap the Leyland cypresses in the backyard in burlap, to keep the deer from eating them.  But they don't actually kill them, and I know the deer have to be terribly hungry to come that close to the house, so I may just leave the Leylands to tough it out.

The wood is stacked on the porch.  The chickens are cozy.  The dogs are groomed.  My only worry now is the black cat that hunts far from the house, at the bottom of the field.  I don't think he has a home.  How is he going to make it through the winter?  There's no way I can lure him to the house, with the dogs around.  I'd leave some food out for him, but I don't know where to put it so he'll know it's there.

Any ideas?

The Angel of the Killing Frost Comes By

Last night he descended on our hill, and with a touch of his icy blade felled the peppers and the eggplants and the nicotiana, and turned the unripe figs to frozen lumps.  I must remember to salvage the figs for the hens, who will appreciate them now that bugs and green grass are history.

 A couple of days earlier I had brought the two geraniums and the Meyer lemon into the house for the winter, and the five big lemons on the tiny tree are now slowly turning yellow next to a sunny window.

I also brought in the big pot of rosemary.  I forgot that I had given it a good watering the day before, and when I went to lift it it was so heavy that I almost dropped it.  But I have never yet dropped anything I've tried to lift, and once I've got something in my arms I am loath to call for help.  So I staggered and groaned and finally got the pot up the two steps into the sun porch where it will live until the spring.  And I thanked my lucky stars for my relatively short back, which has never "gone out" on me yet.  But in the future I must remember not to water the big pots before moving them.

It's time to wrap the Leyland cypresses in their burlap coats, to defend them not from the cold but from the deer.  Last winter, on the pretext that the wild apple crop had failed, the deer tiptoed right up to the house and munched on the evergreens.  This year has been great for apples--you can see piles of them littering the roadsides--but I'm not taking any chances.

I must also remember to put those plastic spiral trunk shields on the fruit trees before the rabbits start chewing on their bark.  And I have to figure out a way to protect the climbing roses against those same rabbits, though I can't see how I can wrap burlap around their thorny branches.  Maybe chicken wire?

Then it will all be done, except for setting up the bird feeder now that the bears have safely gone into their dens.  And then I too can finally--except for picking the chard and the kale, which continue to thumb their noses at the Frozen One--go into hibernation too.

More Crimes Against Nature: Lemon

The list of crimes against Nature in my Vermont garden is getting longer.  Along with espaliering an apricot tree and growing figs in a pot, I am attempting to produce a crop of Meyer lemons.

As with the apricots (three in this, the tree's first year) and figs (nine, in ditto) the lemon crop will be tiny--five, if they all make it.  I have known every one of those five lemons from conception--in fact, I was responsible for the conception of one of them, because when the tree first bloomed it was too cold to take it outside and I had to pretend I was a bee and fertilize the blooms indoors with a watercolor brush.

Meyer lemons, the offspring of a lemon and a sweet orange, originated in China, where they are grown in pots as ornamentals.  They are sweeter and more floral in flavor than ordinary lemons, and their yellow-orange skin is thinner.  Although they had been in this country since the early 1900s, they were rediscovered at Chez Panisse in the 1970s and later popularized by Martha Stewart.  Fancy chefs love them and have figured out a hundred uses for them, most of which are way too complicated for me.

Last winter I was so assiduous with my brush that a dozen flowers set fruit, and I was concerned about how the tiny tree would bear their weight.  But I needn't have worried.  When the little lemons got to be a quarter-inch long they all but one dropped off.

When the weather warmed I took the tree outside thinking that the sun and air would do it good, but with no thought of further fruit.  It surprised me by immediately covering itself in blooms again.  This time there were real bees to do the job, and most of the blooms set fruit.  Again, most of them fell off, but four persevered. 

Now they are tennis-ball-size, but still green.  The weather is turning colder by the day, and I worry that the lemons will not ripen properly indoors, so every evening I bring the tree inside, and take it out in the morning when the sun begins to warm the patio slates.  If it doesn't rain for a couple of days, I water it.  If the wind picks up, I move it to a sheltered spot. 

The four apple trees surrounding the patio watch all this and smirk.  They have withstood ice, snow and drought.  They have been chewed by Japanese beetles, buffeted by high winds and had their flowers decimated by late frosts.  They have not asked for help with fertilization or insect control.  Despite all this, hardy New Englanders that they are, they have produced a mountain of deep-red, crisp, sweet apples.  Now, without any fuss, they are shedding their leaves and going to sleep.

I don't blame them for smirking.  Why go to all this trouble for five measly lemons?  Because I'm human, of course.  Which means that I'm attracted by what is exotic, and delicate, and needing extra care--the tender perennial, the long-finned fish, the white cat, the tiny dog.  It's not just aesthetics or, in the case of fruit, gluttony.  It's the challenge of shaking my fist at Nature, showing her that I can do some things she can't.

As if.

Apple-Culling Time

This is the time of year when, feeling like King Herod getting ready to massacre the Holy Innocents, I pick up a pair of scissors and go out to cull the apple crop.

Apple blossoms grow in clumps of five or six or even more, and on years when there's been plenty of sunshine and the wind has been still and the pollinators have done their job, every one of those blossoms becomes a baby apple.  Infant apples are adorable.  Plump and green and darkly pink, the size of my smallest fingernail, they thrust themselves up on their stems towards the light, towards life, towards the future.

And then I come around with my scissors.

Sometimes among the five or six siblings in a clump there is a clear winner, a plumper, healthier apple to which the others must be sacrificed.  But often all the apples are similar in size and future prospects.  Then I must choose at random which one will live and which will be severed from their stems, fall to the ground, and be gobbled up by my little red dog, Bisou.

I don't like these choices.  They make me feel like some irrational deity wreaking havoc on harmless beings.  They also make me wonder if there is some invisible demiurge poised above me, enormous scissors in hand, ready to cull me.

Besides, I dislike getting rid of all those potential apples.  The purpose of culling is to enable the tree, instead of producing a large number of stunted, gnarly apples, to concentrate its energies on fewer fruit so that these may attain their full glory.   But all kinds of misfortunes may yet befall the apples that I spare.  They may be knocked down by winds, pecked by birds, attacked by fungi.  It is entirely possible that, at harvest time in the fall, I will end up with only a couple of apples.  Wouldn't it be smarter to leave them all on the tree?

But I ignore my doubts and continue sniping with the scissors.  It takes a while to find all those tiny apples.  This is where I'm glad for the severe pruning I do in February or March.  I keep my trees so small that I hardly have to raise my arms to reach the highest branches.

I'm barely into the second of my four trees when it starts to rain again.  After a worrisome dry spring we're finally getting rain, but it's stormy, scary weather with lightning and thunder and precipitous drops in barometric pressure.   This sends Bisou onto my lap and me into the arms of CFS.

I try not to fret about the unculled trees, the unweeded garden, or the unmade bed.  Instead I close my eyes, breathe in, breathe out, and visualize the water table slowly rising.

Shape

When I ordered my lemon tree online, this is what I had in mind...

except for the elegant planter, of course, and the palace of Versailles in the background.  I didn't expect it to have that perfect shape, either, since mine would be in its comparative infancy.  But I did assume that it would have been pruned in such a way as to have some hope of growing into a decent shape.  Sort of the way you take a puppy to puppy classes so it will have the best chances of growing up to be a good dog.

When my tree arrived it had indeed been pruned--you could see the stubs where former branches had attached to the trunk--but it looked like it had been pruned by a tribe of drunken monkeys.  Branches were growing at crazy angles, pressing against each other and looking scraggly.  Getting this tree was a bit like adopting a dog from the pound--neither one arrives looking its best.

But, as with a new dog, at first my attention on the tree was focused on survival issues--giving it just the right amount of water, putting it in a spot it liked.  This must have worked, because the next thing I knew the tree was covered in flower buds, dozens of them on every branch.  Many of those buds fell off, but many clung to the branches and started opening, filling the kitchen with their scent.

Much as I loved the blooms, however, every time I went near the tree all I could see were those clumsy branches growing at ugly angles.  I badly wanted to do some pruning, but I held back because, 1.  you're only supposed to prune while a tree is dormant, and mine was exuberantly awake;  and, 2.  by chopping off the offensive branches I would be cutting my potential lemon crop in half.

 I didn't want to harm the tree, and I badly wanted every last lemon it could produce, so for a couple of weeks I controlled myself and tried to focus on the flowers, which I was hand-pollinating with an old watercolor brush, and their smell. But I wasn't satisfied. To me, the flowers were decorative and thus contingent, but the shape of the tree was essential.  And the shape was all wrong.

Then one morning I was impersonating a bee, dabbing pollen onto pistils, when suddenly, out of nowhere, I had pruning shears in my hand and was slicing off branches right and left.  Decimating my potential lemon crop.  Possibly harming the tree.

I threw the branches (all those flower buds, such a pity!) out on the snow and took a good look at my newly svelte tree.  It was no longer covered in blossoms, but now it had shape, design, intention.   It no longer looked like a refugee from the pound, but like a tree that was loved.

March is almost here, and the little apple trees on my patio are looking scraggly, full of suckers that cry out for the secateurs.  By the time I'm done with them they will be nicely pollarded, the main branches coming off the trunk at wide angles, the interior of the tree trimmed free of clutter so the sun can reach the fruit.  They will have the well-tended, cared-for look of a freshly bathed dog and whoever sees them will think, "these are trees that somebody loves."

Fertility Issues

It's been touch-and-go around here this spring, because of the extreme weather weirdness.  So as soon as the forty days and forty  nights of rain stopped for a while this evening, I went out to check on things.

The frogs, Gaia be thanked, are prospering, though back in March I'd worried about their survival.  There was a spell of hot weather during which a couple of them came out of the murky depths and sunbathed on the patio, and soon thereafter a mass of eggs was seen floating on the water.  That was succeeded by a week of hard freezes during which frogs and eggs disappeared, never, I feared, to be seen again.

But no.  The frogs this year are better than ever, a couple of them as big as pigeons, their offspring clustering sweetly around them.  There are so many that even Bisou, whose passion is to bump every single one back into the pond with her nose, has been known to miss a couple.

The second area of concern was the apple trees, which have been blooming their hearts out for the past several weeks.  But it's not been good weather for pollinators--too cold on sunny days, and rainy on warm ones.  "I saw a honeybee on your apple tree!" my spouse announced the other day, trying to cheer me up.  But what's a single honeybee for all those blooms?

Every day, as their petals began to fall, I would go out and peer at the tiny calyxes with close to the same attention that I gave my own flat stomach when I first became pregnant a million years ago.  Finally today I saw for sure than some of those calyxes are starting to "show."  Thank you, Flora.  Stick with us, Pomona.

And then there are the bluebirds in their nest box by the window.  For weeks they've been coming and going with, to my eyes, neither rhyme nor reason.  First he showed up in a blaze of blue and orange, bearing pieces of hay in his beak and strutting around.  Then she came and seemed to be more focused, actually carrying stuff into the nest.  But then the flow of building materials stopped, followed by casual visits during which the pair would stick their heads into the nest and then fly off, perhaps never to return.  Were they inexperienced?  Were they losing interest?  Were they scared of the frogs?  I didn't dare to look inside then nest box, for fear of putting them off

Today I had lunch with a bluebird-experienced friend who told me that it was o.k. to look in the nest--she had in fact once removed a nestful of parasite-ridden hatchlings, sprayed them with pyrethium, and returned them safely to their parents, who didn't seem to mind.  So the minute I got home I stood on a garden chair and peered into the box.  There, glowing in the dark, were three glossy eggs, the same bright blue as their papa's wings.

Right now it is almost dark, and the father is perched on the roof of the nest box.  I hope he knows what he's doing.  I hope somebody's going to keep those eggs warm tonight.

I Think I Saved The Apple Crop!

I'm not sure what happened in the rest of the country after last week's apocalyptic heat, but here in Vermont the all-time highs were succeeded by two nights of hard frost, which was made worse by howling northwest winds.  We had plenty of warning that the cold was coming, so I asked my spouse to help me save the 2012 apple harvest by covering Freedom and Liberty, my two little apple trees, which had been lured by the hot days to impending bloom.

Fortunately for us, at the moment the trees were even smaller than usual, having just undergone my annual enthusiastic pruning.  Even so, when you walk right up to it, a tree always turns out to be much bigger than you expected.  We flung a large plastic tarp over Liberty, taking care not to damage the spindly end branches.  But we had only one tarp, and when I unfolded the twin-bed sheet I had brought for Freedom, my spouse let out a derisive cackle.

"O.k., I'll get a bigger sheet," I said, and went to the linen closet and came out with a queen-size sheet.  But that wasn't big enough either.  We ended up standing on the patio, being buffeted by arctic gusts as we struggled to attach two big sheets together with binder clips.  This required many binder clips, and some kept coming off because our fingers were clumsy with cold, but finally we hoisted the enlarged sheet over Freedom and fastened the bottom edges together as best we could with some more binder clips.  The wind was so strong that it kept inflating both tarp and sheets like balloons, and I expressed a concern that the trees would be uprooted and carried off over the Green Mountains into New Hampshire.

I didn't have much hope, what with the wind and the freezing rain and the two nights of temperatures in the teens, that the buds would make it, but at least my conscience was clear.  I kept looking out, making sure that the covers were still on, wondering if they were doing any good.  Their skinny trunks swaying in the gale, the trees looked like two enormous lollipops.

This morning, having checked that the forecast lows would not drop below 30F, I removed the tarp and the sheets.  The buds, as far as I could tell,  had survived. 

I was standing on the patio unfastening binder clips when two Canada geese flew honking overhead.  They must have come from the pond hidden back in the woods, and they were flying so low that I could hear the whoosh of their wing beats.  They disappeared behind the roof, but came back and flew over me again, and then again.  They were flying in circles around the house, and one of them was clearly chasing the other, though the one being chased didn't seem to mind.  They were scrawny geese, with extra-long necks, loud and raucous:  juvenile males, I guessed, feeling the season, letting off steam.

After Irene: Vermont's Apple Trees

In the long litany of disasters that fills our eyes and ears these days--houses washed away, roads caved in, seven covered bridges destroyed--that other Vermont icon, the apple tree, is mostly doing fine.  Sure, some old and sick ones, some very young ones, have perished.  But on the whole, Vermont's apple orchards and the upcoming apple harvest have survived Irene.

My own micro orchard of two tiny trees, Liberty and Freedom, is prospering.  They are loaded with big, healthy-looking apples, and throughout the storm I kept checking on them.  I was ready to see those apples of my eye roll to the ground like balls in a bowling alley.  But the trees stood firm, and every single apple clung staunchly to its branch.

I love Vermont's apple trees:  wild unkempt ones that shower their sour fruit onto the roads;  a single ancient one respectfully preserved in a manicured lawn;  old orchards guarding genetic treasures behind crumbling stone walls;  new orchards laid out in trim military ranks.  And I love the festival of apple harvest with its cornucopia of cider, cider donuts, apple pies, apple sauce, apple fritters.  In Vermont there is an apple for every taste:  red, green, yellow, sweet, tart, crunchy, mealy, good for baking, good for pies, good for cider, good for you.  I had no idea that such a tiny state could grow such variety of apples.

I had no idea that such a tiny state could harbor so much destruction, so much sorrow.  But I look at the apple trees and I know that the coming harvest will provide the first opportunity for joyful gatherings around the state.  An apple, after all, is a happy thing.  A tree loaded with reddening globes is a sight to gladden even the weariest of hearts.  I'm glad that 2011 is turning out to be a good year for apples.  Heaven knows we need them.   

Pruning Apple Trees

Today I did one of my favorite garden jobs--favorite perhaps because it is the first of the season:  I pruned my apple trees.  There is still a foot and a half of snow on the ground, but in my little subtropical, south-facing patio, it felt balmy.  It seems early for fruit-tree pruning, but I had seen a man stringing sap lines in the "sugar bush" by the side of the road yesterday, so I figured it would be all right for me to work on the trees.

My European background comes to the fore when I deal with fruit trees:  I prune the heck out of them.  I keep the apple trees no taller than about seven feet, because I want to be able to reach every part of them without a ladder.  They seem to like the treatment, and reward me with huge (relative to their size) harvests.

The pruning consists mostly of getting rid of "suckers," those long, upright-growing branches bearing only leaf buds, and so called because they suck nutrients away from the fruit-bearing branches.  When my daughters were little they used to pick up the longest, straightest suckers to use as foils, and they would have sword fights.  I would gather the rest of the cuttings and throw them over the fence for the goats.  This being the first fresh food they'd seen in months, the goats would dive into the pile of suckers, and munch happily in the sun for hours.

Today, in the absence of both children and goats,  Wolfie and Bisou picked up a few suckers and carried them around for a while.  I left the rest of them on the ground for the rabbit.  We're expecting another foot of snow tomorrow, and I figured he might get hungry.

Apple Trees

My two little apple trees are the apple of my eye.  They are small, and young, and live just a few steps from my back door.  I've kept my eye on them winter and summer, ever since I planted them fall-before-last. 

Coincidentally, one is called "Freedom" and the other "Liberty."  Naturally I prefer the Latin-derived name, but I love both trees as a mother loves her twins.

Last fall, a year after they were planted and had their bottom branches sheared off by an early ice storm, both Liberty and Freedom surprised me with a harvest of several apples each.  This spring they were covered in blooms and, because they stand close to the house's south-facing wall, the late frost that decimated apple crops all around barely touched my little trees.

There were no bees on our land this spring.  Still, enough wasps and ants and bumble bees showed up to ensure that the majority of flowers swelled into fruit.  Consulting the books rather than my emotions, I plucked and discarded most of those baby apples. 

The ones that remained grew as fat as the surviving pups in a litter.  A couple dropped off last month, but now, just before harvest, Freedom has eleven apples, Liberty ten.  They are round and shiny, and they glow red in the setting sun. 

Because I spray neither organically nor inorganically, my apples are bound to be imperfect.  Freedom's apples are larger, but they have a soft, round, brown spot each, which means they will spoil right after I pick them.  I'll have to dry them or freeze them or slice them carefully for eating raw.  Liberty's apples are smaller, with no visible blemishes, but I'm sure some living thing--worm, fungus or bacterium--has made its home in their core and is racing me to the finish.  I'll have to harvest the apples at their relative best, and do my best to make some use of them.

I'll let you know how it all turns out.  

Phoebes Et Al.

The phoebes are back in the nest they built last year just inside the overhang of the front porch roof. I'm glad they're making do with their old nest, because when phoebes build a nest they make a mess you wouldn't believe, and every time somebody comes to the house you have to explain about the mud and poop.

On a less felicitous note, another bird--I don't know what kind--tried to build a nest directly opposite the phoebes, between the carriage lamp and the wall next to the front door. This bird had made such a haphazard-looking nest, mostly out of dried-out iris leaves, that I thought it had abandoned the project--until we found a bunch of nest materials and two little blue eggs broken on the slate floor.

Speaking of birds, the hens spent their first night in the chicken tractor. This morning, when I let them out, the four older birds rushed out as if the grass and its inhabitants had literally been calling for them. The three pullets, however, stayed in the little upstairs sleeping loft, in the dark, peeping. I forced them downstairs and outside and they wandered around on the grass, peeping, trying to figure out how to get back in. Which they eventually did, and rushed up the little ladder, back into the dark.

It rained a little this morning, which is good for the roses I planted yesterday. I've never planted roses before, so at the nursery I asked for the toughest climbers they had. Climbers being the toughest of all roses, mine should be just about indestructible. I got two "New Dawn" pink ones, which sound hopeful, and one "Blanc De Blanc De Corbe," which sounds like a wine.

In the rain, the two little apple trees, which have been blooming their hearts out, started shedding some petals. I'm concerned because I checked them yesterday morning in the sun for pollinating insects and found one wasp, one common housefly, and a couple of ants. Where are the bees?

On a happier note, the giant hostas that I purchased at the Rupert village library benefit last year, and that I had given up for dead, have been thrusting their scary-looking spikes out of the mulch, clearly enjoying the rain.

Who says that nothing happens at our house?