White Christmas

Although our Christmas plans were postponed by sleet and snow, when the grandkids did come up, we had a lovely mild day for sledding.

Carolyn came zipping down the big hill.

Carolyn and Molly ran off into the brush.

Jason whizzed by where I was pointing the camera without any idea of what was in the frame. The sun was too bright to see the screen.

The temperature in the forties made the snow melt, and I found it even slicker the next day, when it had refrozen in the night.

Grammie here doesn't have to have children to go sledding with her, but it is more fun.

Going All Out for Apples

                       In the spring of 2008, I planted two apple trees.

This one, a Criterion, bore its first small apples last Fall. The other one was damaged by the neighbor's cows when they got out. An old apple tree that was here has lovely blooms every spring but both trees need other varieties of nearby blossoms for the bees to pollinate them.

Last month, I planted another apple tree. I dug the hole before I ordered the tree, since that was the hard part, not to be left until the fall rains made it impossible. I brought in some lovely loamy soil, keeping it in the fruit cellar awaiting the arrival of the tree. Adding peat to the precious dirt at planting time, I shoveled the mix around the roots and watered it in with some fish fertilizer.

The tree is a Golden Delicious. If this isn't an exercise in optimism and patience, I don't know what is. Even though I once grew a very productive Golden Delicious apple tree, it's hard to imagine that this whip will ever amount to anything. Right away, I fenced it from stray cows. The location is better, too, being closer to the outside faucet. It's near the existing old apple tree, some variety of red apple, so they can visit and exchange pollen.

Earlier trees I planted suffered from inadequate pruning in their youth, but my daughter Isabelle is now my adviser on such things. She taught me to not leave the low branches, thinking they will increase their distance from the ground. They won't.

For the moment, the new tree is tucked into a snow blanket.

Every day, I look at this thing that would hardly be called a tree and envision it fully grown and laden with apples. While I await fruition of that dream, I've decided to do one more thing to ensure I have more apples than I know what to do with. I'm taking up beekeeping once more. The boxes of wooden hive parts have arrived. I'll be nailing them together in January. Yet another fun outdoor hobby!

No Hens a Laying

Betty, the only hen old enough to lay eggs, was apparently content to lay her eggs in a corner nest. She molted and stopped laying about the time the three pullets joined the flock. Getting a nest box up before spring was a rare instance of me anticipating a need early.

With the advent of cold weather, I'd turned my attention to cutting firewood, but a few nice days gave me the conditions I needed to complete the double nest box I'd started for the hens.

When I looked up the recommended dimensions online, I found that each nest box should be about a foot square. However, larger was better, on account of two hens wanting to lay in the same one at the same time. Some of the ones I looked at were made of plywood. Too flimsy, I thought.

There were all those 2 x 6's in a pile from when my old porch was dismantled. Perfect, I thought. Even the bottom of the box was made of 2 x 6's. Talk about overkill! I failied to notice that the assembled tiers were going to weigh 'way too much for anyone to pick up. Did I mention that the floor of the coop is not very sturdy? So, I had to come up with a way to mount the Hummer box without adding to the problem of the flimsy flooring.

Any fool would have abandoned the prototype and found some lighter lumber, but I'd already invested a lot of effort making the Big Box, so proceeded to get it mounted. Large brackets seemed to be the answer. I screwed them into the studs, then screwed the three layers of the box above them. Considering weight somewhat belatedly, I used a piece of metal for the top. It was a bear to cut.

 It may require some sort of perch for the hens to access it. I could install a hen lift.

Another carpentry lesson learned: figure the final weight of the project! Lucky I wasn't building a glider.