Evening Walk Through the Orchard

Yesterday Vince changed the times the chicken doors close and I always like to check to make sure they actually close after we mess with them. As it gets dark later, we have to change the time the doors close because if we leave them on the old time, the doors will close before the chickens go in and then they’re locked out of their house! This time of year, we seem to have to change the time often . . at least once every two or three weeks. Speaking of longer days . . yesterday it was 103.5 degrees when we were eating an early dinner. May 3. That’s way early for it to be this hot.

Anyway, I went out about 8:30. The door was set to close at 8:40 so I walked around taking pictures while waiting to be sure the door closed. The chickens were already in at 8:30 and the door did close, right on time.

I was having to use a flash on some of these and this was one of them with the flash. We have four pomegranate trees/shrubs. Two are full of blooms and two have no blooms. Last year, we had zero blooms on any of them because of the late freeze but the year before that, all four of them produced so I’m hoping the two with no blooms are just late.

Another one with the lash – these are plums.

Look at those peaches. One branch was drooping from the weight so I propped it up with a lawn chair. Vince dug “dams” around all the trees to keep water from running off when we water them. It was pretty much a waste of time in the orchard because the chickens love that wet, loose dirt for scratching and the dams are already destroyed.

I have never gotten a pear off our trees but this year, it looks like we may have a few pears.

I took pictures of the persimmon and apple trees but the wind was blowing and they were super blurry. The persimmon has lots of blooms and the apple tree has a few apples. In the past, it’s produced way more than it has on it this year. We have several persimmons but only one is older and producing.

Here’s a funny story. This is one of the jujube trees and those little things are the blooms.

The jujubes grow so well here and they produce a lot right up til frost, bugs don’t seem to bother them, so as we lose fruit trees, we’re replacing them with jujubes. We’ve lost a couple of pear trees and have a cherry tree not doing well. It’s too hot here for cherry trees and I have no idea why the pears don’t seem to like living here.

For weeks, Vince kept coming in saying “I smell honeysuckle!” I had not seen any honeysuckle anywhere ever around here but one day, I walked out and I smelled it. We would smell it at different places – sometimes on the side of the house; sometimes between the house and the carport; once we were getting in the car and we both smelled it.

Vince came in the other day with a branch he’d cut off a jujube. It’s those blossoms that smell so good! Those trees are probably 100 yards, maybe 150 yards from our house and we could smell them when the wind was blowing just right. Yes, we need more jujubes – for the yummy smell if nothing else.