Orchard, done

What a weekend! Saturday morning was our vegetable gardening class, which was good. I didn't learn much that wasn't covered in my books, but that was reassuring. We stocked up on some potting soil, mulch and pots for the seedlings, and then headed home to do some farm prep. Mike worked on cleaning up a few trees that he had taken down earlier, and I baked a pie for the neighbor that's been helping us with tractor/excavation work. I headed out to help him for a bit, which involved lots of throwing sticks in the woods, and cursing the wild rose bushes. They're everywhere! Also, stinging nettle. We dug up about 5 cubic feet of it on Saturday, and today we found so much more. I think we'll be fighting both battles for a long time.

I also paid some much needed attention to what has been passing for my perennial bed for the past year. Last fourth of July, Anne and I dug a trench and threw in some plants that my mom brought over. Miracle of miracles, they survived the first summer, but this year I decided that they deserve better. It's hard to think otherwise, this is how they looked on Saturday morning (the green lump in the middle of the very tall weeds is the most prominent plant - we think it's a geranium):

I started by weeding, which was a little difficult because I'm not entirely sure what the actual plants that I'm protecting look like - so I just had to take a guess based on where the brown dead things were (the brown dead things, sadly, are how I've know the plants in the middle of the bed for a long time. This is not a good sign, I know). Then, I dug out the trench to give the plants more space, and filled in the bed with manure. I topped it off with mulch, and now, I have something that actually resembles a bed:

This morning, we decided to tackle the fruit tree planting. We were a little nervous, but I have to say, planting fruit trees really wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. It took us about an hour and a half to get all six in the ground. Mike dug four of the holes, and I did two. We tried to plan out the layout of the trees to allow for more room, so that we can expand later with more trees. I'd like to try plums, and maybe some more apple trees.

We also went back to Skillins today to stock up on more mulch for around the trees. We ended up with two yards, because, as Mike and the mulch guy agreed, "it fits in the truck." Somehow, I was able to stop them before we had three yards. So we now have a pretty big pile of mulch, but I'm sure we'll be using it for the garden. Later tonight we're going to assemble additional light fixtures for the seedlings, but I think replanting them will have to wait until tomorrow. We're both exhausted and sore from all the digging!