Cherry Trees Identified - I think

I think they're Northstar Cherries! Their mature height is 6-10 feet. They are pie cherries (ie sour), and cold hardy. Yay! I've got 6 of them.

I found the final clue in my new favorite book: Back to Basics, A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, 3rd edition, edited by Abigail R. Gehring.

Here's a photo and blurb from www.fast-growing-trees.com/North-Star-Cherry.htm

Famous for its unmatched beauty, but demanded for its delicious, juicy cherries!

Introduced by the University of Minnesota in 1950, this dwarf cherry tree boasts attractive, richly colored bark and petite white flowers in spring, followed by an abundant production of juicy, dark red fruit.

In fact, those who enjoy the many ornamental qualities of the Crabapple tree will love the North Star, as it has many similar physical characteristics.

These plump, tart cherries are considered ideal for baking, but are delicious eaten fresh off of the tree as well. Fruit ripens in late June to late July.

Reaching a mature height of 6-10 feet tall, this cherry tree is ideal for small spaces and works well into even the most established of landscapes or tiniest of yards.

Extremely hardy and self pollinating, the North Star could not be easier to grow! This is one of the few cherry trees that actually don't need a pollinator... so one tree will give you all the cherries you can handle!

Both cold hardy and disease resistant... very low maintenance!

Regrowth, and a Lesson about Old Blueberries

I think I cut down these trees in April, since they were blocking one of the highbush blueberry bushes. Blocking as in growing right through the thing. As you can see, they're doing their best to make up for lost time - these shoots are about 3 feet high already.

I've told several people about all the work I did this spring to eliminate all non-blueberry trees from the blueberry bushes(like that worked - hah). One old-timer told me that what I should have done was just cut everything down about a foot above the ground. The blueberries would love it, and it would give me a better chance of actually getting rid of the bad guys.

I recently got a book (Backyard Homesteading) that says the same thing. For old blueberry bushes that haven't been maintained, cut them entirely down a little above the ground. I think I'll try that this fall or next spring on a few of my bushes to see how it goes. Just need to figure out if I have to dig out the invaders or if there's something else I can do to get rid of them.

Milkweed

The milkweed here is not out quite yet, although it's blossoming in Stockbridge, Mass, and up in Saratoga (see Woodswalker's blog Saratoga Woods and Waterways for some wonderful pictures: http://saratogawoodswaters.blogspot.com/ ).

Looks like it'll be coming out soon!

Morning Walk Around the Yard

I think these are (will be) elderberries.

The highbush blueberries are getting bigger, but are still green. I think they'll be ripe around the end of July, beginning of August.






The apples are getting bigger too, and most of them have these 2 brown dots on them. Could it be a bug that goes in and out? As I explore my property, I keep finding apple trees. I'm up to about 10 now in various places, spread apart. The only tree that's making any number of apples is the one in the middle of the yard, west of the house. Maybe apple trees need to be near other apple trees for fertilization?

Leaves of the mystery bush

It's a little hard to see in this pic, but they're doubly compound.

I Just Picked All of These

I'm waiting for my aunts and uncles to come over for lunch. They're having a ball this week exploring old haunts since they grew up within 2 hours of here. Right now they're in Altamont looking at something or other, and I'm relaxing at the computer with you because I had things to do this morning.

Here's a look at what I picked today.

I know the peonies and the irises, and the chives. Not sure about the rest. Hawkweed, I think, and some sort of rose, and some sort of pea (just the leaves). I have no idea what the tiny white flowers are, or the four-leaved purple things. Or the white flowers in the next picture are.

The cool thing is that even if I don't identify them, they'll still come back next year!

Mystery Bush

It is really neat to constantly be discovering things about my property, and watch mysteries turn into solved mysteries. Here's another one. This is a small bush that was by my front door. (Between the basil plants under buckets in an earlier post about the last freeze.) I saved it from destruction as I was clearing the area to plant herbs because it just looked like something that might have been put there on purpose.

The leaves have red edges and are prickly/furry on the back. I can't find it in the only books I have, Peterson's Trees and Shrubs or Peterson's Wildflowers. I'm guessing, because it's not a wildflower. Anyhow - any thoughts?

Cherry Tree ID

These pictures are for my friend Linda, the botanist (and anyone else with tree wisdom) to see if bark and leaf pics help to identify these trees.

It's hard to get a sense of scale - the tree trunk is probably 2-3 inches diameter.

Tomatoes

My tomato plants are blossoming already! While this makes me happy, I wonder if I should be pinching off the blossoms. You see, these plants are still very short, maybe a foot tall. I can't imagine very many tomatoes would fit on this little thing. It doesn't even reach the first rung of the tomato cages.

Should I leave it to its natural ways, or should I pinch off the blossoms so it can grow a little taller? Tomato experts?

Lawnmower math and the cherry trees

I had to buy a lawnmower this spring, so I picked this beauty, my first riding mower ever. I've got to tell you that for creating that visible sense of accomplishment at a task completed, mowing the lawn even beats doing dishes. And it really helps that I didn't have to sweat in the process. This mower even has a cupholder! (Short aside: in the south, they don't mow their lawn. They "cut the grass." Every time I said I was going to "mow the lawn," I got blank looks.)

Now, I am an engineer by training and inclination, so I focus on things like "what path should I use to avoid the rocks and trees." I also want to avoid the situation where I end up making smaller and smaller circles that end up impossibly small and I can't make the turns. Further, my yard is very lumpy and it looks bad if I mow across the bumps (very short on top of the bumps and very long in the valleys). So I need to make sure that I mow parallel to the bumps, not across them. Actually, "need" is a pretty strong word. Grass is pretty forgiving. If I do it wrong this week, I'll have another chance to do it soon!

What makes it worse is that I am an Industrial Engineer first. Industrial Engineers are the optimization people. For me it's not "what path should I use," it's "what is the optimal path to minimize gas use, time mowing, make the lawn look best, etc, etc." Every week I try a little different set of paths to see if I can improve. I really enjoy this task. I can't help it - I really am an engineer through and through.

I suspect that other engineer-mowers have tackled the lawnmower math question and if I did a google search I'd find many algorithms. I wonder if they enjoy this as much as I do.

Immediately behind the lawnmower you can see 2 of the cherry trees. As you can see, the one on the right is maybe 5 feet tall and the one on the left is even shorter. I have no idea if they are adult trees of a short type, or baby trees that will grow much bigger. The cherries left over from last year were small too. Dwarf cherry trees are not this small (per the internet - source of all wisdom). Maybe they're not cherry trees at all?

The generator

I FINALLY got the 2 cords of wood out of the basement! The weather people say it's rained here for 17 of the last 20 days, and I think that all the nice days were when I was at work. So it's been pretty depressing - especially Monday when I sat at work all day looking at the sunny outside, thinking about how much I was going to get done. Then in the last 2 minutes of the 45-minute commute home it started raining. I was within a mile of home when it started - and it rained steadily all evening.

It's been bothering me because my home-made ramp is big and heavy and it's a real pain to move it in and out of the basement. So I left it in, meaning the basement doors have been open for all 17 of those rainy days, raining in the basement.

I finally got the other not-supposed-to-be-in-the-basement thing out too - the generator. We had an ice storm in mid-December that cut my power for 3 days, a thing I've never experienced in my life, ever. On the 3rd day (as far as I knew my power would be out for another week) I went to Home Depot and bought a generator. I got an electrician to meet me at home after work to hook it in. When I drove up the hill, generator in the back of my truck, my house lights were on. My water pump didn't start working again though, so I had the electrician fix that instead. (He jiggled the pressure valve on the water tank and ta-da I ha water again. 20 psi of it, which I now know is not nearly enough to have a reasonable shower. It was a month of that before I could get a plumber out to replace the valve with a 40-60 psi valve. There's some concern on my part that this pressure water might be straining my old pipes in new ways and water will leak in the walls. But I'll deal with that problem later. Probably when I'm least prepared to do it.)

So the generator sat, in its box in the front yard for several weeks before I finally figured I had to do something with it. I slid it down on a ladder into the basement where it sat molding with everything else until yesterday when it saw the light of day again. Now I have a hand truck and a helper (thanks mom!), and now the generator is in the shed. I still need to get that electrician out to hook it into my house. Hopefully I'll get that done before the power goes out for an extended period of time again.

Getting Ready for Winter

Piles of wood started sprouting in front of country houses sometime in April. First it was a pile of logs, and then a second pile of split wood started growing next to the first one. I've seen it in front of so many houses that it's clear that this is the way it's done. Make winter wood in the spring.

I had planned on renting a splitter, but they rent for about $100 for 24 hours, so I realized I'd be better off buying one, for all the years I plan to use my own wood for heating. This one got good reviews online, so now one sits by my front door, still in the box.

I have many (like 20-40) trees down from the excavator sitting a little ways uphill from the house. The next step is to use the chainsaw to cut the logs, bring them down to the house and then try out this baby. I found a reference piece online from the University of New Hampshire on estimating firewood from standing trees. At 9 inches diameter, 6 trees make a cord and at 8 inches, 8 trees make a cord. Using this reference, I think I have 3-6 cords down waiting to be cut, plus the 2 cords I'm taking out of my basement. Plus the 16 big pine and spruce trees 13-18 inches diameter. (Hopefully I'll use the Red Pine trees for flooring.)

I think I used about 2 cords last winter, so this should be enough wood for several years. I've heard that 2-year old wood is the best wood for burning. What I don't know is if I should cut and split it all and let it age, or if it's better to to leave it unsplit for aging. Also, if 2-year old wood is good is 3-year or 4-year old wood better?

Cherries 2008

In September 2008 when I was walking around the property with my real estate agent, we saw this tree. The entire tree might be 5 feet high. I had no idea what it was, so just took a picture and moved on.

Oh how I wish I would have tasted these things. I'm pretty sure they're cherries, but we'll see. At least I know that the fruit will be out at the end of September.

Now that I've cleared the area where this tree is, I found 5 others just like it. So if these are cherries, I've got 6 of them.

Things we found in the pit

The last tree of the 16 was the closest to the house, so Barry the excavator dug a hole on the away side to make sure the tree would incline away from the house as it fell.

As he was digging that pit he unearthed that nice rock you see in front of the Cat (my new favorite rock - I'll call it table rock). That's the first thing we found in the pit.

After the tree went down and before he started to clean up the area, I noticed a bunch of man-made stuff. Mostly beer cans, but some other stuff too.

Barry didn't like working my property much. He says I've got no topsoil, only rock. Every time he went in, he'd hit a rock, bone-jarring all the way up his spine.

Here are some things we found. The left jar says NoxZema on the bottom, going to the right, Bryce's First Prize Beverages, West Troy Pottery 2, Federal Law Forbids Sale or Reuse of This Bottle (the pint bottle), Liquid Detergent, and last but not least, Schafer's Beer. All of it is on the best find of all. The rock.

I was looking for a million dollars, but no such luck.

Cooper and Atticus

The neighbor dogs come over every so often, and when they do, Maggie goes a little bit nuts (their mom is a part-time resident on the street). Maggie doesn't see other dogs very often (Desmond, my older dog won't play with her). She gets so excited and is so overwhelming that the other dogs don't stick around long.

It's a little sad for me to watch. There's an invisible fence at the end of my driveway, so she can't follow. Every time I see this, I resolve to take Maggie to doggy day care where she can run with other dogs. (Thanks Linda for the idea.) Of course it's not that simple, mostly because doggy day care is hugely expensive, the hours aren't convenient, and it's tremendously out of my way. Excuses, I know.

Maggie is an unknown mix of mutt-hood rescue dog. Apparently though, there's a little bit of Lab or some other water dog in there. This recurring puddle is as close as I have to water, so she takes advantage of it.

Maggie and the Apple Tree

This time last week this apple tree would have been in shade now. This past Monday I had 16 big pine and spruce trees taken down.
I asked the excavator to save this tree if he could, but if he couldn't, I'd understand. He did a great job avoiding this tree, mostly (the downhill side is lighter than it was). It was very close to those old pines. (He also saved 6 small cherry trees that were even closer to the spruces, but that's another picture.)
Now that it's the only tree left to provide shade on the western side of the house, I am appreciating it more. Next week when my aunts and uncles are here for lunch, we may sit under it's branches. I wonder how many times people have sheltered themselves under this tree in the 200 years people have been living in this house (even though this tree is definitely not 200 years old, there is evidence that another tree was nearby).

Cool tool

I found a few of these in one of the sheds. I'm guessing it's a two-sided ...... sort of scythe? I tried it out last week when I was re-clearing an old path. You just sort of wave it back and forth, and things just die in front of it. It's really handy!

I can't really search google to find out what it is, until they come up with a picture search. So if anyone knows what it is, let me know. Thanks.

Newt?

There's a ton of these little guys around, maybe 2 inches long. I have to watch if I don't want to step on one.

Barn Foundation

There's an old barn foundation somewhere under all this comfrey. I saw it on the survey. I wonder if I could clear a bit to find it (except I'm not clearing any more this year!)

It was a Warm Winter

I had a terrible time last winter. I was SO unprepared for a true northern winter.

But let's back up a bit. First, I moved into this new (old) house on October 24, 2008. One week later we had a snowstorm. I heard the forecast, and on the way home from work as it was beginning to snow, I stopped at Target and bought a pair of snow boots and 2 windshield ice scrapers. Good thing, because if I hadn't done that I'd be scraping 6 inches of snow off my car with....my hands? Yes, in October. When I drove down to work the next day, which is at the elevation of the Hudson River, maybe 200 feet, there wasn't any snow at all on the ground.

That's how it started. Then I got two rescue dogs (one housetrained and old, one not housetrained at all) and it got cold. As the weeks went on in November and December, I would come home from work, let the young dog out of the crate and keep her on a 6 ft leash all night so I could watch her and catch her before she made a mess. At the same time I would start a fire in the cold woodstove and spend, honestly, 3 hours trying to get it up to 400 degrees so I could go to bed and not freeze. Restarting it several times, etc, etc. I couldn't even leave the woodstove to make dinner on the other stove because the fire would go out. I was that bad. Even further, I had the thermostat at 60 degrees and used an entire tank of oil per month, which is 200 gallons of oil (at $3/gallon) for November, December and January.

It was pretty obvious to me that people don't live like this. It was hellish, awful life.

Then I went to a weekend organic farming thing in Rochester with a work friend. We spent hours in the car talking, and that's where I learned the secret to using the woodstove and how to keep it warm 24 hours a day. That made a HUGE difference. I hung some contractors plastic to block off about 2/3 of the house so the oil furnace and wood stove only had to heat a smaller volume. Maggie (my young dog) eventually got housetrained so life was immeasurably better in February and March. I also turned the thermostat down to 50 degrees and used the woodstove for heating above that, so I used a lot less oil.

Even with all of those improvements, when the wind blew, I felt a breeze in the middle of the room. I had hung plastic on the windows, and the sound of them sucking in and out when the wind blew was pretty fantastic. I had moved the bed right in front of the woodstove and even then, when the wind blew I could never get it warmer than about 57 degrees in there. It was pretty awful. The wind blew basically all the time. I live on a mountain.

Never mind that in December we had an ice storm that put out my power for 3 days ( a first for me), and more snow than I think I've ever seen. I was just totally bowled over by last winter.

So I would go into work and ask people if this is the way it normally is. Eventually my coworkers, I think to appease me, would just agree with me when I would say, "It's colder than normal, right?" Of course, they don't live on the mountain/plateau here. They didn't get the weather I got.

Fast forward to May 2009. I went on a hike with some folks from the Rensselaer Land Trust, which is a conservation group. After the hike, a bunch of us went to see one of the true old-timers around here, the last of a long and storied tradition of making charcoal in the area. He also lives about a 1/2 mile from my house and has lived here for something like 70 years. He's been in my house when he was a kid and played in the meadows on my property. (Meadows? There ain't any of them left.) Anyway - he says it was a warm winter. Windy though.

I think every day about what to do better this winter. I've checked. The walls are insulated. I think I need to focus on the windows and the floor. I've got plans!