Beaver Dam

There are certain blessings and certain curses to have "inherited" a house with 10 apple trees. When we first bought this house we thought having that many fruit trees would be great. And in lots of ways it is. We love the fruit and we love the border the trees create on the back of our property. But then we realized how much work they are. The first year, we learned how to prune them, we sprayed them every 2 weeks like recommended, we pulled off 3 small apples off the bunch of 5 so that the remaining 2 would grow big, and we tended them carefully only to have a harvest full of wormy apples. So the last 2 years we pruned them but that was it. No more thinking about it till Fall - and the apples were delicious and worm-free, even without spraying them.

Anyway, I got off on a tanget (I sometimes do that!) This year, knowing that we had to at least prune the trees has been on the back of our minds for months. But Quentin has been a little preoccupied with finishing the preschool/theater room. But we heard that last weekend was the last weekend for pruning fruit trees - otherwise it would be too late. So for Family Home Evening last night, we all got out there and got to work. Quentin used the reciprocal saw, I used the big clippers, and the girls gathered the branches and made a beaver dam. They had fun! And we even tied in a lesson about the Olive Tree Parable. And 3 hours later, it was finally done. Except for getting rid of the branches that are now strewn all over our grass. We missed the city "green waste clean up," so we'll have to load them onto a trailer and haul them to the dump. Fun. But at least the pruning is done. For this year.