So when we moved to this property in February we noticed a few trees that we didn’t like too much. One was a dead pine in the front of the motel and one was a crooked pine in the front of our house. I taxed my husband with removing the crooked pine. He and his dad cut it down with an electric chain saw and after digging around the root and using some straps he was able to winch it out of the ground by hand. I came by with the lawn tractor and moved the stump to the burn pile.
Then we had a bit of a storm 2 weeks ago and one of our huge willows had a very large limb break off and split away from the tree, revealing that it is rotten inside. So out comes the electric chain saw again and a well meaning tenant and voila, broken chainsaw! So our other tenant had a brother with a few chain saws. So out they come to cut it all up and luckily my husband had been working on a cart for the tractor, they hauled it off to the burn pile. While they were here we got them to cut down the dead pine.
Unbeknownst to us at the time, that same storm split one of our trees by the garage and was lying on the garage roof. When I looked it over I saw that hydro lines ran through the branches. So I called Hydro One and they sent a guy in to cut ‘er down!! Actually it was two trees as they were very close together and both leaning substantially with hydro lines through them. They left about 8 feet on one of them so we have to get a chainsaw again and chunk it up and carry it off to the burn pile, it is on the to do list.
This is not a cute bush along the road, that is all of the branches that they had already cut.
So five trees gone, just like that!! The hydro guys cut our dead pine stump really close to the ground. At first GJ left a few feet on it thinking he would winch it with straps like he did before. After careful consideration of his back he decided to just cut it and bury it. Of course the guy with the chainsaw was gone then. So Hydro One did us a favour with a quick cut. Our tenant put the soil that they dug up around it, when they were going to remove it, back on and replaced the dead sod over it. We also had extra dirt from the previous owners raised beds that we used to fill the hole up. Pretty soon you won’t even know there was a tree there.
So with the five not so nice looking trees gone, we decided to replace them with ten nice trees of our own. We originally bought an ornamental apple tree for the front, to make up for the loss of the crooked pine, and then fruit trees went on sale. We just planted a small orchard today, 9 fruit trees. Three black cherry, two red cherry, two green plum, one purple plum and one peach tree. I am told that we need to plant more than one of each so we’ll try to get another peach and purple plum if possible.
I think it took about 2 hours and three people to dig the holes, put in nice black earth, pour in the root stimulator, plant the tree, fill the hole back in, gather the extra soil, put landscaping fabric down and then mulch the trees tonight. That was for the nine fruit trees. I’ll try getting pics up soon.
One other project I took on was lighting our back yard. I waited for a sale and picked up 40 outdoor solar lights. Willem pulled the wagon with the laundry baskets of lights and helped mommy place them. We went down the side of the garage, along the back yard and down the side of the motel.
It is hard to take a picture in the dark but here it is.
The harvest is in full swing. I have no idea how many cucumbers I got but I have made 12 one litre jars of pickles, I have about 10-12 in the fridge and we ate quite a few cucumbers as well. I picked out 3 pretty big zucchinis yesterday. This time the largest is measuring 16″ long, 12.5″ round and 3 lbs 13oz . I have a pretty good sized egg plant also.
