A Productive Weekend

Saturday morning, Brett and I worked in the garden preparing it for all the bare root fruit trees that arrived in the mail during the week.  The previous owner must have had quite an extensive garden as there were planter beds everywhere.  The beds were outlined in cement block and lined with chicken wire, to keep gophers out.  I don't need many planter beds so most of the garden is being converted to an orchard.  We worked for a few hours, digging out the cement block and stacking them in a corner.  We must have had eight stacks, each about five feet high.  The skies were getting grey and eventually it started to rain.  The rain continued, on and off, all day and into the evening.

I started making chicken and dumplings in the crock pot before settling on the couch.

At one point, we heard thundering hooves and looked out into the retiree pasture to see Flash and Jackson going full tilt from one end to the other.  They were rearing and bucking -- Jackson got all four feet off the ground and let loose with a rodeo buck at one point -- and not acting like their normal sedate selves.  This morning they seemed fine; I was sure we'd have two gimpy boys for sure.

Our neighbors Al, Cindy and Vanessa came over and we had dinner together.

Um, yeah, we had some wine too.

Pumpkin pie for dessert -- there isn't a picture of that because it disappeared so fast.  Everything disappeared.  I used my new crockpot cookbook that I got for Christmas (thank you Camille).  If this recipe is any indication, it is going to be a well used book.

The rain moved out before we went to bed and the temperatures dropped overnight.  Not much rain, but better than nothing.

The horses were hungry.  There's nothing like cold weather to work up an appetite.

The sky was brilliant.

We spent this afternoon planting all the trees; all eleven of them.  The orchard now has thirteen trees.  They are mix of traditional favorites and heirloom varieties.  Brett dug the holes and I planted the trees.  I topped them off with a mound of compost and then watered them deeply.  We're both tired and sore.  But my orchard is in; the garden is coming together.

The trees in the orchard are:
5 apple (2 Fuji, and one each of Golden Noble, Honeycrisp and White Pearmain)
3 pear (Kieffer, Seckel, Warren)
2 cherry (Black Tartarian, Rainier)
1 Persimmon (Chocolate)
1 Peach (O'Henry)
1 Nectarine (existing)