Pruning

 The dead tree harvest continues. This huge aspen could have fallen on the house in a big storm so it came down. The top half was dead.

















Its fruit tree pruning season in my part of the country. I know absolutely nothing about pruning trees except you are suppose to do it while they are dormant.  I sat down and spent about an hour reading up on it and watching a few different you tube videos. From what I gathered the whole point of pruning is to 1) to create light exposure for both leaves and fruit; 2) provide uniform distribution of fruiting branches; 3) control the size of the tree; 4) reduce limb breakage due to heavy fruit loads; and 5) produce high quality fruit of good size. I really didn't have to do that much, I sniped a couple branches growing sideways back through the tree. I didn't want to go all crazy and hack apart my trees.

Last fall we were all tapped out of money so we had about $35 budget for a tree fence to protect them from deer. We purchased plastic trunk protectors and built a thrifty fence out of 6ft tall spikes and fishing line with soda cans hanging form it. We tapped in the spikes and wrapped the fishing line around the perimeter of the orchard area at three different levels. Then hung a few soda cans around the fence.

The fishing line is hard to see but its tied on at three different heights.

Yes, I know this is totally insane we live in the middle of the woods with deer tracks in our yard. I know nothing about deer behavior or eating habits beyond they like to eat corn in the fields and ate all of our pumpkins in the garden I volunteered at. The fence is working, we have not had a problem all winter. Or maybe because we compost our toilet waste they smell it and stay away. Who knows!!!!

Next project is we tiled the back splash in the kitchen. The company that installed the counter top warned us to get it done asap to avoid mold growing on the sheet rock. I thought it would be a great winter project. Tiling is annoying. Mostly because you have to be bent over in a weird way applying tiles under the cabinets. I struggled with getting the mud on thin enough.

The other annoying part was measuring and making tiny cuts to fit around the outlets. I had my husband do all the cutting with the saw. We have a really cool neighbor that has a whole collection of tools that he loans us, the saw is one of them. I thought it was going to be a quick 2 hour job, nope, 6 hours later it was completed. I am really happy with the way it turned out. It gives the kitchen some texture to distinguish it from the rest of the house.


My husband made a cat toy. He had my son collect a stick and tied the very end of a squirrel tail onto a it. I think its a little creepy.