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...