Lessons I Learned By Cutting A Tree Down

One of the first things Mike planted when he built the house was a peach tree. Over the years, it started to lean and was staked a little too late. In addition to that, it's never really been healthy - sometimes it gets peaches, sometimes it doesn't. We've been talking for the last couple weeks about taking the tree out and planting something in it's place. I'm going to plant a couple peach trees down in the orchard (because of the placement of this one, it also always got attacked by the deer because it was easy for them to eat off of) and hopefully get some productive, healthy trees.

I decided this afternoon to surprise Mike and cut down the peach tree while he was at work. I figured it couldn't be that hard and since most of my gardening ideas have involved heavy lifting, I wanted to do a little bit so that something pretty was planted without Mike having to dig. I learned the following lessons:

Lesson 1: Cutting down a tree is surprisingly easy.

The Chopped Down Peach Tree

Lesson 2: A surprising amount of spiders live in peach trees. Every time you chop, they fall on you. It was my worst nightmare come true.

Lesson 3: Shadow is a really good helper. I hitched the tree to his harness and he helped me pull it up the driveway. Now if only he was strong enough to pull out the stump! I wish I would have gotten a picture, but I was too busy trying to convince him to move!

Lesson 4: Pulling out a stump is surprisingly hard. I dug. I pick axed. I shoveled. I hacked. I finally caved in and called Mike to see if he had any special tips for getting a stump out of the ground. I even walked down to my neighbor's house to see if he would bring his back hoe up (he wasn't home).

The Stump

Lesson 5: Blisters, cuts and sore muscles make laying down on the sofa feel soooo good. There's something to be said for good, hard manual labor!

It looks like I'm going to have to wait until Mike gets home to get the stump out. What am I going to replace this peach tree with? A beautiful baby pink crepe myrtle. I can't wait to have it planted!

Spring!

It's official... spring is here! I have some hanging plants on the porch in front of the house, one of which is a fern. Last year these little grey birds made a nest there and this year they decided to build another one right on top! I've been keeping a close eye on the nest (especially when I water!!!) and we finally have babies! There are five of them!

Baby Birds!

Baby Birds A Little Closer

There's a second nest this year in one of my geraniums - right now it has four little eggs in it!

Eggs In The Second Nest

I'm beyond excited - this really is one of my favorite times of the year. Things are blooming, growing and sweet little babies are being born! I must say, it was near suicide to take these pictures - I had four birds buzzing me with the intent to kill!

In other exciting news, I got a massage today. As part of my biofeedback, I've discovered that I carry a crazy amount of stress in my neck and shoulders, which may be giving me my headaches. The nurse recommended that I get massages to help. I know, it's a tough cross to bear. I've only really had one other massage in my life and let me tell you, if I hit the lottery, I'd get one every day. It's amazing how great you feel after!

An Evening in the Yard

Last night Mike and I spent some time in the yard. Let me remind you that I have a very serious addiction to the garden center at Lowe's. And that we had a freakish snow storm that killed off the garden I planted a wee bit early. I digress. I replanted the tomatoes, peppers (a variety of hot and mild ones), cucumbers, and watermelon. Now I'm back to patiently watering until I get some crops! While I was at Lowe's, I found some bougainvillea vines to plant in Shadow's pen. I'm wanting some pretty vines to grow along the fence and I think these might be the ones!

Here's the funny part: Mike had Shadow in the pen while he was digging and planting. Shadow was patiently watching and hanging out. I thought it was cute at the time - little did I know, he was storing away the mechanics of planting (and unplanting) things. That's right, the minute we walked away, he went to town trying to get the plants up. He was victorious with one... I replanted it, but I'm not sure how long it will last. Lesson learned!

My Orchard

I spent a good portion of this last weekend doing some very therapeutic gardening. For me, there's just something about planting something in the ground and watching it grow. I'm actually nerdy enough that I go out almost every day and look to see if I can see if anything has grown (believe it or not, if you pay attention to plants, you can sometimes see changes over night!). It's hard for me to describe why that makes me happy, but it does. There's nothing like a beautiful flower or a fresh apple to make you feel like the digging and watering was worth it!
I am determined this year to pay better attention to my vegetable garden - last year it produced a lot, but I was terrible about actually getting out there, picking the food and then cooking with it. I've also made an effort to plant things I'll actually eat! Here's what went into the veggie garden:

Watermelon
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Three types of peppers
Artichoke
Strawberries

I also started an orchard. I did pose the question on Facebook as to what actually constitutes an orchard and most people agreed that it's a group of trees planted in a row. The wikipedia definition is as follows: "an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production". Yup, I've got one of those! The Blankenheim orchards consist of the following:

2 Granny Smith apple trees
2 Fuji apple trees
2 apricot trees
2 orange trees

Further away on the property we have 2 olive trees, two avocado trees, a peach tree and a lemon tree. Needless to say, in the next couple of years I intend to do some serious pie/strudel baking. I honestly can't wait to have fruit on all of my trees! I'm pretty sure I should have invested in some Lowe's stock... in fact, the one thing that I think is missing is some cherry trees! I'm going to check our local nursery because Lowe's only had the ultra-dwarf versions that don't get very tall and with the deer, we need something that has some height. So happy it's spring!

Glorious Sunday

Today has been one of the best days in a long time! I think part of it is because I am finally feeling better. I've had a little bit of a residual cough and overall feeling of yuckiness since I was sick a couple weeks ago.

This morning, I woke up (for no good reason) at 6am. While that would really bother a  lot of people, for me it's a sign that I'm finally feeling better. It's not typical for me to sleep much past 7am (yes, even on the weekends) and so if I find I'm dragging when I get out of bed it either means I'm getting sick or I've worn myself down.

I sat for a little while after I woke up and tried to decide what I wanted to do with my day. There have been several things I've been meaning to do, but haven't because I've just been busy and there are several things that I just plain wanted to do. So, I got myself together and set out to get my errands done.

First up, church. I admit, over the last couple years, I've really slacked on the church thing. I'm not really sure why, but I think it was mostly being busy and,  (I know) being lazy. I started back towards the beginning of December and was on a roll... until the black plague hit my house. For the last few weeks I've just been too darned sick to go anywhere. Our parish got a new pastor at the New Year and I hadn't met him yet. His name is Father Liam and, you guessed it, he's Irish. I can listen to someone with an accent talk forever!

After church, I decided to stop by the gym (it's strategically placed directly between my church and my house). Another thing that went by the wayside when I was sick was the exercising. Mike and I went running near our house on Friday and it almost killed us both... we literally both coughed for like 2 hours afterwards. I decided to give the treadmill a try, with much better results. I got a solid 2 miles in!

After the gym I decided to finish all of my away from home chores by hitting the grocery store. I'm also on a kick to try to eat a little healthier. I do pretty well, but I need to try to curb the snacking. I've spent the last couple nights trying to convince my brain that strawberries taste exactly like chocolate (as my dessert). I bought a ton of fruits and veggies today that I'm going to make an effort to pack in my lunches this week!

Finally, when I got home, I planted two trees. Of the three apple trees we planted last year, one died - my lone granny smith tree. For those of you who don't cook/bake, that's the apple that you need for things like pies and strudels. They're tart, which makes them perfect for cooking. I had a really hard time finding them anywhere and was told by a local nursery to keep an eye out in January when all of the bare root stuff came out. Lo and behold, I happened to stick my head into Lowe's the other day and I snagged the last two granny smiths. Now they're planted (and caged - we've got deer that would love some fresh apple trees).

All of this (plus a shower) was done by noon! Not a bad morning. The good part of that was that it left the rest of my Sunday to rest! I did some reading on my Kindle (I love it!) and took a really short nap. Now I'm watching football with Mike and we just had some delicious cheese sticks (I said I'm trying to eat healthier... but I'm not cutting everything out!). The rest of today will consist of more reading, more football and some baked ziti tonight.

Not a bad Sunday!

Evening in the Yard

Today I did some much needed work on my garden. I had planted some hanging baskets a couple months ago and my pansies and snapdragons did not do too well once it started to get really hot. I replaced them with several versions of geranium and a succulent. I'm so excited!

I did some work upstairs as well... we had two patches of basil growing which was WAY too much, so I pulled one of those out and planted some thyme. I have a row of hummingbird feeders and I decided to add a hanging fuchsia to help lure more. It is a spectacular plant!

I also got some spectacular pictures of a sweet little hummingbird eating out of one of my feeders. I absolutely love those little guys!

Finally, Shadow and I spent some quality time together. It's been a while since we just rolled around on the floor and he got a tummy rub. Clearly, he liked it:

The Weekend of Plants

This weekend was fantastic... Mike and I did some serious work around the yard. We have a great big hillside that right now is overgrown with weeds and grasses... that got sprayed and we started planting some St. John's Wort, which is a pretty flower (also used to treat depression). This hill gets a lot of sun, so the St. John's Wort should do well. We have another hillside that gets a good bit of shade, so we're doing periwinkle on that side. All of this is supposed to be super fast growing (you know me... I want it to cover the hillside overnight), but I'll still have to be patient!
Mike and I also made a little visit to the Amador Flower Farm... what a fantastic place it was! They specialize in day lilies (which I had a ton of at the old house) but they had all sorts of other beautiful plants. I'm so excited... I was out of room at the Mather house, but now I have 5 acres of land to plant on!

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend - I planted some hanging baskets for the wrap around porch, a ton of groundcover, some bushes for the front walkway and helped with the two avocado trees. We still have some wisteria that we're going to plant in Shadow's pen (to help shield him so he doesn't bark at everything) and then some olive trees. We're having a hard time finding apple trees that are not the 3-in-1 kinda (I just want some plain old Granny Smith's!), but the people at Lowe's said we might see that a little later in the season.

In other exciting (and totally unrelated) news, Kati and Nate are engaged! I'm so super excited for them! They've set a date (June 4, 2011) and are moving forward with all of their plans (duh... we're Smithson girls, we can't help but plan from the beginning!). The proposal was super sweet - Nate took Kati to Yosemite, they climbed to the top of the Yosemite falls and he proposed there. Hooray!

Weekend Wrapup

Another crazy week here! Thursday night I dyed my hair dark again - only this time I did it on my own and finally got it dark enough. I'm pretty sure that my hair dresser refused to do it that dark because he was scared. I love it. Now I have to face him the next time I go in for a hair cut. That's always the awkward part. But hey, I'm saving my money right now, so the hair and nails had to go. It's a good thing, really. I would much rather have a house!

I spent all of Saturday morning in the yard raking leaves. I woke up with this brilliant idea that I was going to earn my keep and get it done so my dad wouldn't have it. It didn't look like a lot of leaves... boy, was I wrong! Three hours, one entire "green" garbage can and four gigantic Hefty bags later, I was done. Cody and I were so pooped we had to take a 2 hour nap. Seriously, my little shoulders are sore today - who would have thought that raking would be so much exercise? And who would have thought that three little trees could drop so many leaves!?

Today was spent researching puppies. I've been looking just for kicks - I definitely want two when I get the house for protection (and company), so I thought I would be proactive and research the best breed for me. The first that came to mind was the Siberian Husky. It's one of the most beautiful dogs in the world, however, the following was on EVERY website I found:

THESE DOGS WILL RUN AWAY IF LEFT OFF A LEASH, EVEN IF YOU THINK THEY'RE TRAINED".

Um, yeah, not what I would like to deal with. Not to mention the fact that they like to jump and can jump as high as 8 feet. I definitely don't want a dog that could hurdle me.

Next up on my list was the German Shepherd. They're friendly, easily trained and fiercely loyal. They also have a double undercoat that they shed at least twice a year. Now, I am officially not allergic to dogs (thank you allergy tests) but I don't know that I want to deal with that kind of fur. I've seen the fur fly, so to speak, with Cody and it's a mess.

After German Shepherds was the lovable Labrador Retriever. Things got interesting here. They come in three colors (ok, four, but I'm not paying for the rare silver one) - chocolate, yellow and black. They are great watchdogs, very loyal, easily trained, although a little more independent and stubborn than their cousins the Golden Retriever. Basically, it's me in dog form. I want two. Now. A boy and a girl, one yellow, one chocolate.

Now that that's settled, I just need to get a house...