Phil continued to scythe in the orchard. He's not finished yet, but where he's finished weeding around the trees, the orchard looks so well groomed.
The rest of the orchard is still a bit overgrown, but the one patch of comfrey is growing larger and stronger.
I finished my labeling of trees on Friday. The tallest tree touches my chin! I like the beautiful shape of the grafts on the originally grafted trees: the cambium of rootstock and scion grew together beautifully.
I ended with the 30 bud grafts I attempted about a month ago. In retrospect, I probably should have used a rubber band to connect the bud to the tree more firmly. I relied on the parafilm to keep the connection firm, but with the rapid rainfall lately, the trees grew so swiftly, they burst the parafilm, and pushed the bud grafts out. Six of the buds fell off, and several more appear to be hanging on by a thread. But some appear to be doing well.
My beautiful Thai Red Roselle hibiscus are covered with blossoms. This afternoon was the first fruit day since we've been back, and it took me two and a half hours to harvest the fruits from the six or seven plants I have. I ended up with about 10 gallons worth of blooms, enough to keep me in lovely red zinger tea for the next year. (But in the future, I'm going to try to stay on top of harvest: it's much faster to pick the fruits with a simple snap, as I can when they're smaller; once they reach golf ball size, it requires pruning shears, and that takes exponentially longer.)
Although they don't lay eggs yet, and although they are not large birds, I love our Holland chickens. When I go to feed them, they come at a run, and follow me around. Phil said, "I can pet them!" As adults, they have firmly settled their coloring: the girls are darker, the boys are lighter, with handsome combs.
Our friend is baling hay currently. Phil mentioned that we could use about ten bales, and we could store them in our blue building until the immediate need. Those beautiful bales came today, and the sweet scent of perfect hay wafted down the driveway. While I don't love buying hay, I am thankful we have it available and I enjoyed that delicious country scent.
We've been preparing for our underground storage building. I had hoped to have an excavator come this weekend, but it looks like we're on the schedule for next weekend. We have the site marked out, from just across from the greenhouse back to the woods.
Phil went yesterday to pick up our new PTO-driven concrete mixer.
Also, a long-anticipated purchase: forks to attach to the front of the tractor. We are so happy to soon be in a position to unload large loads for ourselves! Butch has been unfailing gracious as we've relied on him several times a year, but how much better to be a bit more independent. (Moving haybales with forks will be much easier, too, than the rigmarole required when moving a half ton bale with the bucket.)
The boys have been active, too. On Thursday, Jadon spent hours getting a burn ready. We had dropped all the broken wood from the metal building forms into our mid-slope pit. Jadon used the wheelbarrow to cart three loads of cardboard down to the pit, and then stuck with a long, hard job fetching hose. When the easily accessible hose didn't reach, Jadon searched and finally dragged a length from the neighbor's far pasture to the south, probably about a quarter of a mile hauling a hundred feet of hose.
Then he stood, in the 80 degree sun, burning for hours.
Today, all four boys spent about eight hours in between the trailers, building an elaborate train track, using all the track and all the blocks.
So precious!
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