Uhhhhh. Have I mentioned how I hate evening hours?

[altivo]

Yeah, I know I have. Just two weeks off is enough that I forgot how much I hate having to work until 8 pm. It was a fairly busy night too, which didn't help matters. I'm glad it's only one night a week.

Tess seems to be quite her normal self now. Still on bute and will be until Saturday, so we shall see what happens then, but other than being grumpy about a restricted diet, she's her usual sweet self, and moving about normally, walking and trotting willingly when asked. Whew.

Linux conversion proceeds as planned, Monday is the big switch. And probably Friday I'll find out if I got a raise this year... ;p

Weather service fails again. More dire predictions that came to naught, it didn't even rain. Just as well right now. The warmth this week has brought out the apple blossoms, and heavy rain or frost right now would reduce the crop severely (that happened last year and the year before in this area.) There are so many apples, pears, crabapples, and cherries blooming in the area that you can smell it just by stepping outside. Four of our nine remaining fruit trees in the orchard are blooming this year. First time for the two pear trees. We also have a couple of ornamental trees that grew from twigs I got in the mail from the Arbor Day Society several years ago. Both are blooming this year, a Bradford pear and some kind of tiny crabapple that birds are supposed to like.

Barn swallows have returned to our barn as of yesterday. I saw the female poking around in the nest this morning. They reuse the same nest every year, made of balls of mud stuck to the rafters. They do tend to make a mess immediately below the nest, but they eat tens of thousands of mosquitoes so we try not to disturb them. We are awaiting the orioles, the wood thrush, the rosebreasted grosbeak, and the hummingbirds. All are due any day now, as well as two transients that we see only briefly: indigo bunting and red headed woodpecker. We have several other woodpeckers who are resident year round, but only see the real red head briefly in the spring.

Comments

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

What all do you have in your orchard?

At our old place we had where I first grew up before moving out here to "the country" with a postage stamp sized lot (versus 3 acres we had "in the city"), we have (I'll have to guesstimate from memory, haven't lived there since I was 9 years old ... egad, that was 21 years ago!)

2 pear trees (rarely get anything more than hard, tiny pears that really aren't very appealing)
3 1/2 king apple trees (Its really 3, but one of them was split by a tornado about 25 years ago and acts, more or less, like two different trees)
~20 plum trees
~5 cherry-plum trees
1 cherry tree (forget the exact kind, but they were kinda smallish, usually red)
3 hazelnut trees

The neighbors we had, had a *hewj* Bing cherry tree us neighborhood kids would often raid, and no matter how much we ate, there were way too many for us to get them all, heh.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I am big on apples, especially old fashioned varieties that you can't buy easily today. Most of our trees are dwarf size which is supposed to make them bear sooner but you couldn't prove that by me. Currently alive and growing are Dolgo crabapple (great for jelly or wine, and will pollenate other apples,) Winter banana (an unusual old variety that is supposed to keep well, the only apple that has born fruit for us so far,) Red Astrakhan (an Asian variety that is supposed to tolerate bitter winters and still yield good apples,) Esopus Spitzenberg (a small green apple with brown and red spots, Thomas Jefferson's favorite, not much to look at but very tasty and good in pies,) Prairie spy (hardy, good tasting, good for pie, but not a great keeper so must be frozen or dried,) Colette pear (I know nothing about this one, my mate picked it out, but it's blooming this year for the first time,) and Beurre Bosc pear (those pointy brown-skinned ones you can find at the store sometimes, very tasty when ripe.)

I would really like sour cherries for pies, but we have tried five times with both Meteor and Northstar, which are supposed to be the hardiest of varieties, and they always die. I give up. A couple of pears and several apples have failed on us as well.

My mate likes Bing cherries, but I do not. I prefer the red sour kind that make the best pies, cobbler, wine, and jelly.

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

Almost forgot we had 3 crabapple trees ... I didn't know there were several varieties of crabapple. These were fairly tart.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Crabs are usually small and quite sour. There are dozens of varieties, most selected for the differences in flower color because they are planted for that rather than the fruit. But Dolgo has apples the size of apricots and is quite juicy. I can eat them just like a regular apple, though they are a bit puckery with a bitter edge. Made into jelly, the result is a clear, gem-like red with a very pleasant fragrance and taste. I had planted one in our back yard in Chicago, and it was quite large by the time we sold the place, about ten feet tall and eight feet in diameter. In a good year the crop amounted to about a half bushel. The last year we were there, I made wine from them and got three gallons of rose red nectar. It was one of the best wines I've ever tasted and probably will never be duplicated.

We like to experiment with things like that. Winemaking has some successes and some failures, but that one was spectacular. Our attempt at making sauerkraut was a slimy, smelly disaster, though. ;p

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I like birdies... *puts a napkin around his neck* Just kidding, if you manage to snap any pictures of them I'd like to see them. I like the little "Willy wagtail" but I don't know what it's proper name is. Also the Japanese Heiodori bird although rather ordinary I quite like them.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Bird photography is not easy. I'll see what I can do but no promises. It's fun looking at birds from other parts of the world, though. They are sometimes very different from what you take for granted. I know our cardinal, blue jay, and oriole are quite unusual and striking, and not usually seen outside of North America. And you have quite a few exotic looking birds of your own.

What I really like, though, is the singing. The wood thrush has the most beautiful, haunting song even though the bird is just a largish brown one with a spotted breast. Orioles are fabulous singers too, as are the grosbeaks.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

The Aussie Magpie are big on warbling, Whip birds and Bell birds have a very specific sounding call often heard but not often seen. We also have the odd pheasant fluttering about. Rainbow Lorikeets seem to have the area around here under their turf at the moment. But Cockatoos, Galahs, Kookaburras, Butcher birds, Fig birds, the rare Rosella or King parrot are all visable at different times of the year. That is life in the border suburb where I live which is right against a State Forest :)