I'm Supposed to be Working...

...but I'm obviously not.


This year's trees have been planted, and the vineyard has been caned. After digging 6 new holes, DH's poor back can rest a bit.




KW digging the last of the 6 holes (the deepest and widest of the 6, too).

While we don't have acres and acres, we do have a bit more space than a lot of our neighbors do. At first, we thought that was a good thing, and had all sorts of plans for hot tubs and lush landscaping and patios and lounge chairs...


And then we lived here for a year. Fuggedaboutit...


If the blistering summers don't get you, the afternoon sirocco will. 'way too windy to do any relaxing outside. Forget about reading or knitting. In order to truly wind-proof the backyard enough to make it even vaguely comfortable, we'd probably have to sink $10,000 to $15,000 into it. Wind-breaks, arbors, sturdy-enough trellises, mostly-grown trees... you name it.

So, we did what we tend to do - we ignored it for the first 3 or 4 years.


Then last year, we got a wild hare up our butts (and a few extra dollars in our bank account) and decided to put some landscaping in along the right-hand side of our fence. That looks really nice, and so far, we haven't killed any of the plants or trees. We were going to have the same lady do some other landscaping, but DH and I couldn't quite decide on what we wanted, and the next thing you knew, we were into all the busy travel of late last year, and landscaping ideas were (mostly) forgotten.


But now, a new year came (along with some trees that I totally forgot I had ordered back in May or June of last year), and the growing thing started up again. DM was able to get us some heirloom variety trees (2 Coral Champagne cherries, 1 Black Tartarian cherry, 1 Baby Crawford peach), so when we were plotting out those, we thought "Hm... maybe an orange tree, too?" Suddenly, we found ourselves at Westside Nursery in Gilroy with a Valencia orange tree in our cart! As we were heading to check out, we passed a bunch of apple trees that had been espaliered. When I looked closer, I saw that each limb was a different apple - I had to have that! Then we started talking about getting some wisteria or bougainvillea to bring in the bees for pollination.

At the end of today, DH dug 6 holes (3 cherries, 1 orange, 1 peach, 1 apple), and got all of the trees planted, the grapes have been caned (hopefully we didn't kill them), and his wheelbarrow tire has been replaced. (We opted to wait on the bee-bringing bushes.) It all looks pretty scrawny right now (I mean, come on, the 'cherry trees' are just sticks!), but I'm going to try to remember to take progress photos as the weather starts to warm up. Hopefully it will be documentation of trees taking root, not of the slow destruction of some lovely heirloom trees.


Looking over the orange grove towards the vineyard and the cherry orchard. (The grapes are Cabernet, Merlot, zinfandel, and 2 seedless table grapes.)





The peach sticks.






The cherry sticks (2 Coral, 1 Black Tartarian).




The espaliered semi-dwarf apple (Braeburn, Gravenstein, Fuji, Red and Yellow Delicious, and Gala).


The mobile Christmas tree farm (we don't know where they'll go yet).