Cherries Planted & Some Extra

We planted the final two fruit trees today.  This one is the Black Tartarian Cherry.

   

This is the Rainier Cherry.  I really hope these cherries grow well. Rainiers are like eating candy!

That leaves just the Sugar Maple left to plant.  I'm still not 100% sure where I want to put it.  The place I have in mind (where my trail splits at the loop) means I will probably have to put a deer protection fence around it until it gets big enough.  

And so it is still in the pot (in the background of the first picture) while I try to make up my mind.  That was the extent of our outside work today because it was significantly cooler and windier.

A good day to make bread!  (This is Farmhouse White Bread from the Farmgirl Fare blog.) 

And lest you think we're all work and no play here's Star and me out having a little fun last Sunday!

As I sit here writing this the clouds have opened and it is now pouring rain.  The weather looks to be improving by the weekend so we'll be able to get back outside soon.

Aspen, Pear, And Apples Planted

This morning I smoothed the area where I wanted to put the quaking aspen trees.

It was pretty rough from digging out the larger clumps of sage brush with the backhoe.  This was before we got the brush hog.  I think I figured out the trick to getting everything fairly level.  As my husband said, "You went over it about a thousand times."  Yes, I did go over and over this small area for about 45 minutes.  But it worked and now it's all smoothed out and level.  No more fox holes to trip in.

I know it's kind of hard to see but the five aspens have been planted. (Click on the picture to enlarge.)  If all goes well then we can get more to plant here next year.   

Another view.

Then we moved on to planting the fruit trees.  We decided to keep them inside the fenced area.  In the corner is the Red D'anjou pear and on the side is the "four-in-one" espaliered apple.  While we were planting I noticed the four-in-one is actually a six-in-one.  The varieties are all semi dwarf of:  Jonagold; Gravenstein; Braeburn; Macintosh; Gala; and Fuji.

We still have the two cherries to plant and the maple tree.

That will be another day.

Planting Flowers And Making An Arena

Today I finally got to planting my roses and lavender.  First I had to rototill the area I had in mind for them.

Rototilling:  done.

Time to start raking and planting.

While I was planting and raking Hubby was trimming the large juniper.

My planting is done.  Kind of hard to see here because everything is so little yet.

A little better view.  I planted English lavender (supposed to be frost hardy); the roses are from nearest to furthest (I know you can't tell now anyway...) Sheer Bliss, Double Delight, Angel Face, and Snow Fire. And along the fence line I planted two types of Dahlias:  Spassmacher and Witteman's Best.  They were in a bag of ten from Costco that our last visitors brought for me.

After lunch and a nap I went out and flagged the area I had in mind for an arena.  Then Hubby told me to go get a take and bake pizza for dinner.  When I got back he was almost finished!

On this picture you can see my flags on the trees to the right.

Almost done.

Of course then I noticed I had put a big dent in one corner so I had to run out and change the flags to make it more square and not so trapezoidal shaped.

There is still quite a bit to do before it will be rideable.  Most (but not all) of the trees in the area will be removed.  The trees that are to remain will be limbed up to look more attractive.  And of course the ground needs to be tilled and smoothed.

I guess in about 2 years the flowers along the fence will look half way decent.  Hopefully it won't take that long to get the arena in shape.

Shaved: Grass & Cat

First thing this morning I took Ollie in to get shaved of her knotted and felted fur. I would have done it last year so it wouldn't have been so bad this year, but as you probably know circumstances just didn't allow it to happen.

Anyhow, then I went home and we waited for a delivery from the Kubota dealership in Redmond. Just before noon the driveway alarm went off and it was our delivery. Hubby had talked to the owner of the dealership yesterday inquiring about renting a mower. They have been thinking of renting implements but still haven't gotten to that point. Instead he showed Hubby a used brush hog and said we could use it and if we liked it he would sell it to us, otherwise just let him know and he would pick it up.

Kind of hard to pass up a deal like that.

The delivery guy (also one of their mechanics) showed us how to hook it up and how to operate it. Then it was time to go to work. Today he mowed the section north of the house.

The finished area. I love it! Next we will grade it smooth with the scraper and probably throw some sort of grass seed out.

I have an area in mind for an arena and that will be next.

Here is poor Ollie with her new 'do. She was done a little later in the day so she is still quite groggy even as I'm typing now. She may be unhappy about the manhandling and going to the vet but she has got to be more comfortable without the knots pulling at her skin now.

And finally today Hubby saw a new bird at the feeder. This is a Brown-Headed Cowbird.

It got a little drizzly this afternoon but I'm still resisting starting to paint the purple wall. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Pots

The main thing I did today was pot the few veggies we got. We did have to go back into Bend and Redmond for a few things first though. And as we were heading back to Prineville we stopped at the Kubota dealership to ask a question. More on that exciting news later!

So I planted three kinds of tomatoes: purple Cherokee, Husky Cherry Red, and German Queen. I had tried the German Queen in Bakersfield and it didn't do too well for me there. I'm going to give it a try here and hope it does better. I got one Ozark Beauty Strawberry, a couple Sweet Basils, a German Thyme (smells so good!), and a couple of Rosemary plants. In the black pot beyond the bench I planted one each Pontiac Red and Yukon Gold potatoes. The remaining 7 spuds I planted between the arborvitaes. If the potted potatoes do well I may do all container potatoes next time.

I got another flat (8 pots) of English lavender to add to the other flat I got the other day. After all you can never have too much lavender! I put the bench there to hopefully deter any deer munchings. While my sister-in-law has deer that come up to her front steps I think the deer around here are a little more cautious of humans. At least I hope so.

Tomorrow will be exciting. Now that the weather seems to be doing better (we saw the road guys sweeping the sand/rock off the roads, a good sign they aren't expecting any more freezing soon) and I have just enough extra money to pay for it, Ollie has an appointment to get shaved. Kneadermeier needs it too but she's not quite as bad as Ollie. She can wait until next pay day.

Tomorrow we are expecting a delivery of a brush hog mower. The Kubota guy said we could use it and try it out and if we like it we can buy it for a little less than half the new price. It is used but supposedly in good condition. It will be interesting to see what we can do with it. I think we'll be able to do a lot of clearing a lot faster!

Clearing And Burning

Today we worked on clearing the strip on the east side of the house between the driveway and the fence line. That's where we want to start our aspen grove.

We had pulled some of the juniper and sage brush and piled it up yesterday. Today was a great day for burning the pile as it was off and on ever so slightly drizzly.

When I finished doing the dishes I went outside to help. While I tended the fire Hubby used the backhoe to dig out the shrubs. Then I would grab them and put them on the fire. In this picture you can see we made some progress today.

I'm thinking I'll be sleeping fairly well tonight.

Starting On The Trees

Originally Hubby wanted to plant the arborvitae (I think I misspelled it yesterday) on either side of the big gate to the new fence. I thought when he said "the gate" he meant to gate at the top of the driveway, near the street.

After we got home he realized the giant juniper near the corner was not where he thought it was and it was going to interfere with his vision of how he wanted the trees to be. I didn't like that location anyway because it would shade the fenced yard too much, and that's where he wanted to plant the fruit trees.

Since his original plan wasn't going to work out I suggested planting the trees on the other side. That way they wouldn't block the sun to the fruit trees.

According to the tag these are emerald green arborvitae smaragd, Thuja occidentalis. I'm afraid that's all Latin to me. These should work well for us as they have a hardiness to -30°. The tag says they mature at 12-15' and 36-48" wide.

I wanted to be able to rototill between the trees and the fence so we planted them a bit off the fence line. For some reason they don't look properly spaced here. Maybe because they aren't? Oh well, they're good enough.

Then we started on the area where I want to plant the aspens. It's all full of juniper and sage brush garbage.

It's not done but it's been started. In this picture the area we started clearing is not in the foreground but the area beyond the big juniper. The clear area in the foreground is actually the driveway that goes to the gate to the big area on our east side (where Hubby climbed the hill).

Earlier today we went back to Redmond to get paint for the remaining purple eggplant wall. While we were there we looked for a pollinator for the Rainier cherry tree and found the tag-recommended black tartarian up against a fence behind the register. I also forgot to mention that we got a red d'anjou pear yesterday along with all the other trees.

I'm not sure how much we'll get done tomorrow because I think it's supposed to rain. If it does rain then I guess we can get started on the purple wall!

Truck O' Trees!

The weather today was absolutely beautiful. We've been talking about getting various fruit trees and some other trees and plants. Today was the day. We got a truck load!

Some of the other plants we got.

I was so excited! The weather was just georgeous and I really hope it stays good for a while. We were at Home Depot last weekend and I asked about lavendar and the guy said it was still too early for this area. But today they had some and I snatched up a whole tray.

Here are the trees we got (if I remember them all): 4 arbor vitae (hope the deer don't kill them!!); a sugar maple (I am going to attempt to make my own maple syrup--ha ha!); 5 aspen trees (to make a pretty little "grove"); a pretty espaliered 4-in-one apple (sorry I don't have the tag to tell you what varieties); a Rainier cherry (super sweet and delicious). We didn't get the pollinator for the cherry yet. That's because the tag recommended a Tartarian and the store didn't have one. I found out after I got home we could have gotten one of the other cherry trees they had (I think it was a Van). Well, next time we go to Redmond...

The other plants we got were 4 different roses (they were on 50% off sale); the lavendar; red and white potatoes; rosemary; thyme; tomatoes; and a strawberry.

I'll get into the details of the varieties of everything when we get around to planting.

I think I've just about made up my mind to turn what I was going to make a tack room into an orangery. The shop is plenty big enough that I could actually make a couple of walls to make a tack room in there. That should be easy enough to do.

Now to start working on plans for the orangery...

Black Ornaments

Here's a funny little story.

The people moving into our house were enthusiastic about it from the moment they first started walking around looking at it. But according to them, what really sealed the deal was when he was walking out the front door, he looked to the right and saw the avacado tree.

And wouldn't you just know it, this year (I think it's the tree's third year) we have more avacadoes hanging on it than ever. I think we counted 16, more than double what we got last year!

They look like beautiful shiny black ornaments to me! And sadly no, I don't remember what variety they are...maybe Ignacio, or Northrup, or Walter Hole. I found this website that lists a BUNCH of different varieties of avacodoes. (Click on "varieties", then click on "variety list".) I can tell you the skins are very smooth, thin, obviously black ripe and unripe.

They are still hard to the touch but I think by the time we are moving out they will either be still not quite ripe (which is A-okay) or they will be ripe. Either way, we'll be taking them with us!

Well, maybe we'll leave the new people one or two... ☺

Weird Harvest

We have a zucchini plant growing in a pot and it is still producing zucchinis!

I'm getting anywhere from 1 to 3 eggs every day. Today I got a weird egg.

It's a little hard to see in the pictures but the egg is kind of flat on one side.Here it is laying on the flat side.
This is from one end. You can kind of see the weird shape here.

And today we went in to the title company and signed escrow papers. Here's the stack we got.

I've decided not to bring the chickens with us. My friend Vicki's mother in law said she will take them. This way I don't have to worry about making sure there is some sort of an enclosure for them for when we get up to Oregon. When we find our final place I'll start over with the chickens and that should be pretty easy.

I've also decided to sell Ladysmith and this year's heifer calf; taking Dakota, the bull, and Waneata, last year's heifer calf, besides the two horses. We may already have a buyer for them too. (The cows, not the horses.)

The worst thing right now is that we apparently have to wait basically until the last minute to move. That's the way it sounds anyhow. We've asked several people and it seems like the laws are greatly in favor of the buyer. It sounds like we could go to the last day of escrow and they could back out at the last minute if they wanted to.

So I guess we are supposed to wait until the last minute to get everything out of the house and get moved. If we took a chance and did it sooner and they backed out we would be stuck with a rental and this place and then have to start over.

Somehow it just doesn't seem quite fair. You would think there would be a sooner-than-the-last-day-of-escrow-point-of-no-return. These are all just thoughts that are going through my husband's and my heads.

But I do think these buyers are very nice people and I think they will be very accommodating. I know they are eager to move in and they couldn't be more excited. For my part I know I am excited too.

One more off the wall comment. I didn't realize "weird" would be spelled e-before-i, since I thought the general rule was i-before-e-except-after-c. I found that out when I did the spell check.

How weird.

First Day Of Fall

Today we were expecting at least one showing of the house. I had thought at first there would be two, but the second person hadn't called the realtor back yet, so we knew for sure there would be at least one tonight. These were the people who were supposed to be here Saturday but had a family emergency. Then on their next scheduled appointment on Tuesday had some kind of soccer emergency (??!!). My realtor told their realtor "if they cancel again you are in BIG TROUBLE!"

They showed up.

But first...

I was unhappy with some of the flowers in the beds and decided to change them out. The impatiens by the front door originally were looking really good, but over time they got leggy, like the bottom leaves were being eaten. I put out snail bait but either the snails had moved on or maybe they weren't the problem to begin with because there were no dead snails.

In any case I pulled the old impatiens out and replanted that area with blue lobelia and red begonias. There was a clump of orange daylilies that I separated and replanted behind the begonias. I think it turned out nicely.

Here's the entrance now with the new flowers on the left and the old marigolds on the right. They're still doing quite well.

We have a circular drive and the flowers at the west end were petunias that were dying due to not being watered properly. Yeah, they will do that. So I got some yellow pansies and planted them in the foreground, some blue pansies I planted in the background, and red snapdragons I planted down the middle.

The flowers on the east side of the drive still look good (zinnias and petunias and gerbera daisies).

In the very back of the property, which is actually not our property but belongs to the Rio Bravo Water Storage District, I have a little raised bed with a standard tree rose called Pillow Fight. Underneath was a mess of weeds so I cleared them out and planted mounding Marguerite Daisies with white alyssum between.

Close up. Is that an angel orb in the middle? (Stay tuned...)
Later in the day I happened to look up and saw these.

They were slowly circling the ponds (which are full by the way), possibly checking them out.

It was a big mess of white pelicans.

Now back to the "orb" picture. If you enlarge the first through third pictures of the pelicans you will see more spots. I looked at my lens and it was really, really dirty! So much for that explanation! Ha ha.

I was just about done with my last minute preparations for the showing, which was scheduled for 5:30 pm. It was 4:20 when my realtor called and asked if some people who had been in the area looking at another house could swing by at 4:30. I said sure, since I was as good as done anyhow.

Two minutes later they showed up. The realtor apologized for being early but it was okay. It turns out this was a lady who had been here last week with her brother, and now she said her kids wanted to see the place. That's good right?

Then they left and promptly at 5:30 the previously scheduled people who had twice cancelled actually showed up. They, like all the others, seemed to like everything and the man asked a lot of questions. He seemed satisfied and then they left.

So we had two showings after all.

Let's keep our fingers crossed, shall we?

Thanks.