The Quiet

ByShae

 

The Internet seems quieter this week. Fewer tweets, not so much fussing with Facebook. Websites down for maintenance. Bloggers resting after the holiday rush of doing and making. It feels good to stop. To cut back.

I took advantage of the break between bruising rainstorms and pruned my dwarf Blenheim Apricot tree. (A couple weeks early, I believe.) It’s only two years old, so the cuts were drastic. There will be no fruit this summer — or next, for that matter — but this is the price of helping a young tree grow strong enough to bear good fruit in later years.

This is a wonderful little book: How to Prune Fruit Trees, by R. Sanford Martin. It was published in 1944 and has been reprinted more than twenty times since. It’s a slender thing, but it contains very specific directions for pruning trees and vines from Almond to Youngberry — and pretty much everything in between. I started out feeling like the guy on the cover, but the book put me and my loppers at ease. It’s absolutely worth searching out at the library or any place that sells used books. My local nursery had a few copies for sale.

Pruning. Dreaming. Taking notes. Making lists. What will the new year bring?

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5 Comments

  1. Happy New Year, Shae !! Thanks for the wonderful blog and your enthusiasm for all things jamilicious !! Rosemary Rideout

  2. I loved picking up the prunings that the gardeners left on the ground at the winery. I stuck them in a vase to bloom for a burst of springtime blooms. We have Royal Blenhams too and had a bumper crop which means no fruit in 2011. Happy New Year and good blogging for us all in 2011!

  3. Happy New Year, Shae! I hope you have a wonderful 2011 and can't wait to see where it takes you.

  4. I'm enjoying the quiet. Excellent cover and I like your going the distance for your apricots.

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