Check out my big plums!

Wow!  While the trees are deciding to drop most of their baby plums, the ones they dropped are growing fast! I kind of wonder if the really dry weather has had anything to do with such a high rate of fruit drop, or maybe the trees just aren't mature enough to handle them all? Either way, I decided to give them a supplemental watering this weekend, and if we don't get much of the rain that's forecast for this week, I'll probably be watching again.

Assuming these plums make it all the way, I'll have to remember to mark which branches are which variety - these are 2 in 1 granted trees (and I'm blanking on the varieties right now), but they didn't come labeled with which branch is which type of plum - so no way to know until I have ripe fruit.

Peony power!

This is the first to bloom -and not really one of my favorites since I prefer the bomb types.

Party hats

The peach tree kept blowing around while I was trying to take pics, so this is a bit blurry, but you get the idea. Juvenile peaches are really goofy looking, especially when they still have part of the original flow dried up on them.  They have the fuzzy little ball (the future peach), and then sort of a dried out party hat, topped with a little spike.

Before and after - Mary's Naughty Mitts

So I finally finished Mary's mittens. How does she feel about them?

She loves them!

I learned quite a bit with this project.  Like stranded-knitting REALLY requires a relaxed, looser tension than I'm used to.  I'm a pretty tight knitter, and that doesn't work with this stuff.  Knit too tight, and there's zero stretch/give to the finished project, and you can cut off your circulation!

And because I had a little gap of time between finishing the first mitten and starting the second, and blocking the first mitten before starting the second, I got to see what a difference blocking can make!  Check this out - the mitt on the left is the just-finished second mitten (pre-blocking), and the one on the right is the first mitt (post-blocking for the main part of the mitt, but then the "finger cap" was added on afterwards, at Mary's request).

And here's the same two mittens after blocking.  Since the first mitt had already been blocked (but then had part ripped out, and a thumb-cap and finger-cap added on), I carefully only soaked/massaged the new parts while also doing the same for the full second mitt.  A bit awkward, but I think it worked out ok.

Are they perfect?  Nope!  Mary was able to tell that the second mitt was a little looser than the first one.  Even though I tried to get them to LOOK the same size after blocking them, you can still tell they're different when wearing them.  There's some little flaws here and there in the knitting, but that just shows they're homemade, right?

I do kinda wish I would've knit the patterns in reverse of what they are, so that when worn the deer couples were facing each other.  Oh well - I guess they're just embarrassed, or like their privacy?

Either way - Mary seems to love the naughty mitts!  ;-)

Cherries!

Look at all the potential cherries!

I say "potential" because I'm not holding my breath.  But still - look at all those little pink bits where the flowers were - most of those should have been pollinated and could be a little sweet cherry!

Even though I'm seeing all these now, it's hard to tell if any took frost damage Sunday night or Monday night, and then will the tree just give some of them up due to having too many, and then finally, I understand birds sort of have a thing for cherries - the kind of thing where the humans often don't get many of the cherries they're hoping to harvest. A day or two before we would pick them, the birds will think they're just fine and scarf them all up. Will this be the year to try bird netting on the fruit trees?!

This next shot is looking straight up - I don't plan to let the trees get super tall and unmanageable without a step ladder, but we'll have to see how that goes over the years.  I have to say the leaves on ALL the fruit trees are looking incredibly healthy right now.

There are a variety of cherries growing in the yard - just three trees, but one is a 4-in-1 graft that's had one of the grafts die off, so it's just a 3-in-1 at this point.

The cherry next to my thumbnail is one of the largest potential-cherries I've seen on the trees so far.  Talk about exciting!  (I'm not sure if the little guy next to it is gonna make it - it's looking a little deformed)

Plum progress

So I've started noticing something really interesting about the plum trees this year...but first, a little set up:

I have three 4'x4' raised beds, one right next to the other, running north-to-south.  Each has strawberry plants and a Stark Bros 2-n-1 Japanese plum tree (Shiro and Redheart plums) planted in it.  I put the trees in two years ago, and last spring they bloomed like crazy during an unusually early warm spell, and then temps went back to normal and all the little plums got frosted off.  The beds are really close to each other, so it's not like they're in different micro-climates across the yard, nor are the trees really big, so it's not like each is shading the one to the north.

This year the weather's been a little more consistent, and the trees looked beautiful while in bloom, and we've only had a couple mild frosts since.  What I've noticed however, is that the trees seemed to have ever so slightly staggered blooming (with the southernmost tree blooming just a little earlier, and the southernmost blooming just a little past the middle tree), and they dropped their blooms in the same order.  And now?

Here's a close up of the southernmost tree...see all those little nubbins, often pale on the tip, with no leaf, no bloom and no fruit on it?  Those are spots where the tree DID have blooms and then may have started to form a fruit.  Most of them dropped off.  You can see one tiny plum (probably about half the width of my pinky nail) at the bottom of the picture.

And the northernmost tree?  Loaded with little plums - again, none any bigger than half the size of my pinky nail at this point.  You can also see some little pale plums, and some little empty spurs where a flower or fruit already dropped off.  But the tree is loaded with little fruit!

The little off-colored pale plums are going to drop off.  Many of them I can just barely touch and they instantly detach and drop.  The ones with the dark green plums?  Those guys are holding on firm!

And yes, the middle tree seems to have less than the northernmost tree, and more than the southernmost tree.

So is this just chance?  Or is it that the trees are really every-so-slightly shading the tree to their north, cooling them just a bit, causing them to bloom just a little later, and therefore making them hold out until the temperatures are a bit more ideal?  This is definitely something I'll have to watch in future years!

First clematis of the season!

And boy aren't they pretty? !  Don't recall which variety this is - forgot to check the tag. And i think this was actually a discounted end of season clearance clematis that I just put in last fall?

C'mon, chase me!

Tag, you're it.

What dogs look like at 500mph

Zoom!

Ready? Let's go!