Greening Up

My friend Susan—my kids’ other mother—has a master’s degree in botany. I’ve always said that if Susan can’t grow something, it can’t be grown in Montana. She has an orchard full of apple trees and generously shares the apples from her Duchess of Oldenburg tree with me every year so I can make apple pie filling. She has also been doing a lot of grafting and experimenting with cuttings taken from old trees here in our little community. A few months ago, she offered to graft me a cutting from her Duchess tree so I would have my own. She also grafted me a cutting from a Westfield Seek No Further that she ordered for me from Fedco, and yesterday she sent me a picture:

This is very exciting! She said the Duchess and the Northern Lights grafts are testing her patience and taking a bit longer, but no doubt they will green up, too.

Apple trees are a rabbit hole I don’t want to fall into as it is easy to become obsessed. The reason I wanted a Seek No Further was because it is featured in a series of books—the Wilderness series—by one of my favorite authors, Sara Donati. It’s an old, old, New England variety and I just think it would be cool to have one in my own orchard.

Our apple trees are doing very well, but the other fruit trees are struggling. Two of our pear trees were crushed under a tree that fell during that March windstorm. They are still alive, amazingly, although looking a bit battered. We have two peach and two cherry trees in another area that haven’t produced anything since we put them in. I was planning to take them out this year, but the cherry trees woke up suddenly and are covered with blossoms. If they produce this year, I guess they will get to stay.

I put in an elderberry bush this year, too, and it’s doing really well.

My tiny chocolate mint plant survived the Great Vole Infestation of the herb garden last winter. I’ll move it to a spot over by the big garden where it can sprawl. There is already a spearmint plant over there that I plan to harvest this year and dry for tea.

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I talked to the girls this week and it sounds like things are starting to open back up in Washington state. I am planning a trip to see them some time next month. The husband noted the other day that this is the first time in several years that I have been home for our anniversary (or to plant the garden). Last year, I was in London, and the year before that, I had gone to meet DD#1’s future in-laws. I have a bad habit of traveling on our anniversary because it falls on a long holiday weekend.

Getting away from a farm(ette) is tricky. The peeps are big enough now that I only have to check on them once during the day, and even that isn’t absolutely necessary as they have plenty of food and water. But piglets are supposed to show up next week—I have to call and verify today—and I’ll need to be here to make sure they are settling in.

The husband is happy that he didn’t have to do the planting this year. He has a tendency to dig holes and stick plants in them without a lot of consideration of what goes where. I don’t blame him for wanting to get the job done, but there was one year that I found bean plants growing among the cucumbers and had no idea if they were green beans for eating or dry beans for shelling. I tend to be a bit more meticulous in my garden organization. And it’s amazing how quickly the weeds will grow in a week if I am not here to stay on top of things.