Bud Break!

After one day in the 70s back in March, we had such a hot "spring" that it really felt more like we went from winter to summer in two days.

So we have been absolutely reveling in the cooler weather the last week. The gentle rain that started Saturday night finally ended 48 hours later. In all that time, we had less than an inch. But I think just about all that water actually soaked in.

With the cessation of precipitation, I was eager to see if any of my grafts had bud break. Grafting takes a rootstock and a small section of new wood (the scion), and joins their cambium layers (the thin layer of green growing tree right under the bark). The cambiums were cut, and they make the tree equivalent of a scab. The scabs should join the rootstock and scion, and the graft will function as a tree.

If the connection doesn't take, the rootstock might still live: I would just need to try grafting it again with a new bit of scion wood.

Many of my grafts showed no real change: the buds were small and tight, filled with latent life, waiting to spring forth.

Some of the grafts, though, have buds beginning to swell.

And a very few are actually showing green!

It is so exciting, I had to refrain from going down to peek at the grafts every few hours. I want to cheer them on, or caress them, or something. Keep swelling! Keep growing!

So that was wonderful. It was wonderful to see the bees out flying again. I spent some time getting the next section of my moon bed ready for planting, and to work down amidst the hum of the hives, and smell the sweet honey smell ... so great.

Joe came to bring me a few buckets of compost, carried in little sand pails. He figured I would need them, and wanted to help.

He held up four fingers and said, "You have this many hives." He didn't know the name for that number, but he sure had the concept down. (I remember from his brothers, matching objects to numbers is more tricky than I expected: it's so easy to start counting, and count "two three" for the second item, ending up with some wildly inflated number. Good for Joe to match hives to fingers and get the right answer.)

Phil and I commandeered Cheri, Jadon, Isaiah, and Abraham into helping us finish the tree paste. With six of us slathering trunks, we finished the entire orchard in short order. How wonderful to have another task fully accomplished.

Phil noticed that parts of his compost pile project were beginning to steam, and by evening the ground had dried enough that he could work on it a bit more.