Continuing the “update” posts, I wanted to share some progress on the orchard we planted in the spring. As many of you will have heard, the deer devastated the trees the night we planted them (didn’t get the fencing up fast enough), so what looked like a promising first year got ruined. Still, there are some fun bits to share, and progression to be seen over the past few months.
Out watering the trees in the morning gives you a chance to see an amazing sunrise. We were still getting rain at this point, and things were still quite green
At this point the daisies were in full bloom, some of them almost as tall as the trees! As Justine loves them, we leave them growing in the “yard” as spring - I try and cut around as many of them as possible.
JUst a few weeks later you can see we’ve passed “peak daisy” and many of them have died off. We’ve started inot what ended up being a string of 50 days without any rain, and the lawn has really died off. The soaker hoses are keeping the trees healthy through it all.
While the deer did destroy almost all the trees - the stripped the leaves and ate all the flowers - they did miss a few pears on one tree. At this stage they are still pretty tiny, but there are four of them that we’ll hopefully coax to maturity.
Similarly, one ambrosia apple tree had one apple survive the deer attack. One apple isn’t going to go very far, but it is fun to watch it grow!
The four pears are hanging on, and getting bigger each time we return. They’re even starting to look like pears now!
The little apple isn’t growing as fast as the pear. Hopefully it will start to grow in size.
One of the other pears on the tree.