Just catching you up on some doings! No crafts to speak of.
The gorgeous weather of the past few weeks had us frantically yet also peacefully making inroads on the storm-tossed- and-battered landscape we call our yard. There is so much to do, but working outside, especially when the days are warm but also mercifully short (since we will just keep hacking and hauling and raking and cutting as long as the sun shines, and too many hours of that are just exhausting) lifts the spirits wonderfully.
I'm not going to lie. I won't be sad if we have a mild winter. When I drive along, I see ongoing repair of last winter's floods. The most recent events (the hurricane and the October snow) have left damage that hasn't begun to be addressed.
The Chief cat-proofed, hopefully, the bluebird houses (over on the left), and we have the makings of several fine burn piles in the brush there. |
I have this inner dialogue of futility. Do you have it too? The sheer amount of work to be done weighs down on me, and I spend a lot of time telling myself that there is no way it can all be accomplished. However, I've learned two important things:
1. You can do a lot in an hour. And:
2. You can do a lot in a day.
Because we've been battling on other fronts, the pear trees have been neglected.
They grew very tall.
That seems like a good thing, but being neighbors to a big orchard has taught me something: you really have to hack away at fruit trees, because you have to be able to reach the fruit! When we first moved here, I thought the owners were mangling their trees. I didn't understand how they could lop off the tops the way they did, because of course, if you do that to a shade tree — cut off the main trunk of a maple, for instance — you ruin it.
Now I see. Now that a couple of years have gone by with pears lying wasted on the ground simply because we couldn't reach them and there were too many.
Pears, by the way, are unlike apples. You have to pick them before they are quite ripe, or they won't keep at all. Of course, you mustn't pick them too soon. Figures that I'd have pear trees, with their mysterious, complicated, unknowableness. No straightforward apples for me!
You know how sometimes a pear looks lovely on the outside but reveals a mushy interior? Well, it ripened on the tree! The ones that fall on the ground are useless. That's very different from chestnuts, by the way, which are only good when they fall. I found that out because my neighbor has (Chinese, not American, but still edible) chestnut trees, and I studied up on them after he offered to let us collect the nuts.
It's not only being absorbed with other things that prevented me from pruning the pears. It's not being strong enough to handle the big trunks or knowing which saw to use. It's also being paralyzed by too much reading.
Naturally, people who have great experience with growing pears, and do it for a living, have very particular ideas about how you should prune the trees. Their instructions are so precise that they are impossible to follow. Like many other things in life, to understand finally, you must learn a bit but also just do.
So all that talk about crossing branches and suckers and angles of cuts is just fine. But this operation needed to be performed now, and drastically. No room for fine tuning. We needed to be the ruthless hackers of our orchard. It was so bad that the grapevines (which are going to swallow us up one day) had climbed over the largest of the three trees, making a sort of cave under it!
Wouldn't I love some sort of bulldozer of my very own….
We'll see next year if we've been overzealous. Maybe the books will have the last laugh.
Anyway, Thanksgiving came, with its Mass, football game with the monks, making of name cards, and subsequent exhaustion.
I will leave the food as read. No need to bore you. We had turkey. We had pie.
Then back to yard work! Branches! Storm cleanup! The never-ending war against the elements! When will I knit!? (While they removed this bad boy, I mowed up the leaves and took pictures.)
Does that branch look small? The base of it is the size of a respectable tree! |
And then we were so tired…
There is a person under there. |
Lori says
Whew! I kind of tired just from reading. I know what you mean about the internal dialog. Imagine if all of our internal dialogs were displayed in mid-air above our heads, sort of like that weird stalker-scroll-thing facebook added recently that shows one's friends activity there. That would be quite the mixed-bag-blessing-curse, I think!
Aunt Sue says
Do you ever look back at something you made or did, like knitting a sweater or painting a room and think, “How did i ever do that? Why d id I have time then, but I don't seem to have any time now. I do that all the time. I never feel like there is time to accomplish things. But you are right. An hour or a day, things get accomplished a little at a time. 🙂
Bethany James says
I finally planted my garlic yesterday, and I know just what you mean about internal dialogue and being surprised about how much you can finish in a given amount of time. I put it off for what? About 3 months, and then yesterday I cleared out the beds, tilled them up, added amendments, sorted and planted the garlic, and I was shocked when I got back in the house and it was only and hour and a half later. That included harvesting sunflower heads and playing with the chickens! I'd get so much more finished If I'd just start things in the first place.
_Rosie says
Oh my goodness. We need a partridge, STAT!
Where do you get a partridge, and how do you entice it into the tree? Once perched, how do you convince it to stay there? The song gives little direction in these matters.
Pipppajo says
Perhaps someone could fashion a cunning partridge disguise for the chicken.
Dawn says
I love that last picture. I am sure it will be wonderful to have the pear trees ready next summer.
Blessings,
Dawn
Laura says
I love the bittersweet! We just bought our house this year, and I was thrilled to find bittersweet in the backyard. I brought some twigs in and put them in vases. I don't know if it's “right,” but I like it. What you've done with it is lovely!
Hollace says
I want to thank you for the help you gave me on preparing for Thanksgiving Dinner. For the first time I made my own cranberry sauce and yams . I did them ahead just as you described. I tried to follow the tips for getting laundry and housework out of the way. I did the potatoes and the fruit jello ahead. My daughter was so surprised and impressed at how ready everything was. I got a lot of encouragement from your post .
Emily says
Me too! I did the cranberry sauce and yams ahead as well, and got dinner on the table by 1:30pm (as planned!) without even being stressed. It was a lovely holiday and I really think your post helped.
Katherine says
Pruning…ugh. I pour over books every year and I still doubt myself everytime I pick up the pruners and saw. We have an old apricot tree that especially needs it, but I love that tree and I'm afraid it will never be the same. We have two long rows of raspberries that need to be weeded and thinned. It's never ending. Ten years ago I was dying to have acreage and now that we have five, I really understand why old people sell their family homes and move into condos.
justamouse says
I totally agree, lack of Thanksgiving reporting. I am underwhelmed. What was the making of namecards thing about? Is there glitter involved? Just plain writing a name on a card? I can't quite figure it out because you remarked on it, which means that I don't think that you tore bits of paper and had people write their names on them. There must have been other stuff involved. Do you place them? Do you play musical chairs and let everyone have a go at their own spot? I was completely miffed at the my own seating arrangements this year, or lack of it. Perhaps if I had a name card tutorial…
I think she should quilt the chicken a partridge suit and stick it in the pear tree. I hear they're going for a nice bit of money these days.
Pipppajo says
Hahaha! Four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a chicken in a quilted partridge suit!
_Rosie says
You ladies are cracking me up!
Cathy says
Perhaps I'm projecting here, but that box Bridget has on her head looks seriously like a craft box with acrylic paint in it . I know this because I put my acrylic paints in a very similar container; we put glitter and paint on wooden snowflakes yesterday.
I surmise the name “cards” involved painting of some sort. And glitter.
Deb says
Last year I sawed about half of my fruit trees down as they were also too high to reach (and the birds got all of my lovely organic fruit). This year they are covered in fruit. Seems the tree can put more energy into fruiting with less branches. You wont regret cutting them back. 🙂
Margo says
I love this “get 'er done!!!” attitude. Around here, we call that Grandma Weavering 🙂 No prissiness or reading directions at all – just get it DONE. This drives my husband bats sometimes.
Bridget looks stunning in that scarf.
Patty says
I LOVE the final photo. That could be a magazine cover. 🙂
Helene says
Your wonderful advice and cheerful attitude about Thanksgiving is what got me through hosting the holiday for my large family. We have a lot of damage from that storm, too. But it looks like you are on top of it. Watch out for that grapevine! It will choke everything in its path. I have been battling it in our yard for several seasons. It does seem to stay away if you cut it near its knobby root crown. For a long time I thought it was kudzu! That last picture will make beautiful wallpaper for my phone! I love your hilariously fun family. I will come back to read often. Thank you for writing!
_Leila says
Helene: Re: grapevines: too late. 🙁
nt12many says
Loved your “inner dialogue of futility” remark. Once those negative remarks about futility and failure and not-worth-the -effort start swirling around in the noggin' I might as well lay down on the floor with a gigantic pumpkin pie and eat myself silly.
Today at church some of my (ahem) middle-aged friends and I were lamenting a bit about the amount of chaos that some of our almost adult children leave swirling behind them in the house and we were further lamenting how long the housework seems to take. “Remember?” (we asked each other) “when we could stay up until one in the morning deep cleaning the entire house even with little ones around? How did we do it?”
The answer? We were younger…we had more energy (yes, even though I do remember the pregnancy/nursing fatigue of young motherhood.
So hang in there Leila (and fellow family tree pruners!) soon it will be cold enough to give you an excuse to hunker down, rest and knit to your hearts content.
Jill Farris ” target=”_blank”>http://www.generationalwomanhood.wordpress.com
Mrs. Pickles says
What excellent posture, Miss Bridget! 🙂