Monthly Archives: April 2005

Apple Trees will bloom soon

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Our Liberty Apple trees will be blooming soon. The buds are setting and two on one of the trees opened today. I supposed many will open tomorrow and Monday. The problem with this is that the tree that needs to bloom so that the Liberty blossoms can be fertilized is our MacFree, which rarely has put out more than a handful of blooms and usually those only open when the Liberty trees have nearly finished there bloom. It’s frustrating since we bought these trees through a catalog nursery which said these two are good together for making apples. Hmph. We do need to trim down the MacFree, it may be growing all wrong, from the root stock more than from the MacFree. These are Semi-Dwarf apple trees. So really I want to get Crab Apple trees … they’ll do the job of looking nice and helping out the Liberty Apple blossoms. We don’t have any plans to get any Crab Apple trees installed though, at this point.

One day I hope we can move from this property and I’ll be sad to leave these Apple trees. I’ve wanted to do good by them and get sprays and helps for them, so far they are au’ naturel except for some pruning and fireblight spray help in past years. It costs money to upkeep apple trees. Money that we would have had but didn’t have after all the job changes in the past years since we got the trees. So we got the trees with good intentions.

If we are able to go sooner than later, or perhaps get some land first that we will build upon … then we could move these trees, but I wouldn’t want to do that later than sooner. I’d feel better about it moving them to another place where we would be with them for longer, while we still had this property and could replace the trees here with something else before selling. It’s a sort of silly attachment to the trees that I have. I don’t think they are doing as well here as they would do on another property. We got the trees right when I first was pregnant with Victoria, and we planted them after we had just known for certain our second child was on the way for a week or so. They have special meaning therefore. I chose them for the type and name and they ended up being more special due to baby stuff afterthefact.

So it goes that we have another year of Spring Fertilization beginning and little hope of a nice apple crop once again as well. If the bee population is higher it would be helpful, and if there are other apple trees in the area that could be a help under higher bee population conditions. I would have bees on our own larger property, for fertilization of apples and veggy garden, and for honey. I won’t get into that sort of thing in our little subdivision though. So we are dependant on whatever conditions prevail … and that will be blessed by God this year I hope, so we can have some apples in September, just a few would be nice. Liberty apples are so crisp and sweet. So very nice. We have had only a few but never enough nice ones to have for long. Just a few for a day or two’s use, then none. Or not even that. Disease and yucky who-knows-what kind of things take most of the apples that form. So I’m anxious for the day when I can have pro-active sprays to increase yield, and bees and other trees to aide fertilization!

Cabinet Hardware etc

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I hung the doors on the painted yucky cabinets. It looks nice, the color is great, just up close it’s too ridgy, and a few spots got mussed up in the hanging anyhow, so it’s best that I have to re-do some of it in the first place.

The cabinets originally had the doors hung differently. They are four doors, and were hung with the opening side facing in this order:

Right, Right, Left, Left

The upper cabinets that originally were above them are the same, but the doors are taller and have the catherdral routing in them. The lower cabinets that I’ve been working on have smaller doors and they have a plain routing around the door, in both upper and lower it’s an inch or inch-and-a-half inside from the edge. Both upper and lower were hung in that order.

I didn’t like it. Some years ago I changed the upper doors to face this way:

Right, Left, Right, Left

That made more visual and usage sense to me.

I hadn’t changed the bottom ones, or if I had I can’t recall … I took the doors off the lower cabinets so long ago now it seems, and I really don’t know since I painted the face of the cabinet then too. In the paint you can see the outline and holes of the old hinge positions. I saw none in the middle where there would have been some if I had changed the positions before. I can see that I wouldn’t have changed them back when I did the others since they are lower doors … not as noticeable and all that. In the place the cabinet sits now they are more prominent and that makes it noticeable that they hang a certain way or a different way. I saw immediately when I went to hang them that they truly belonged Right, Left, Right, Left. I only have two drawer fronts finished and with those two drawers installed, one can see the beauty that is beginning to show. The old countertop sits on the cabinet … just sits there, not installed anymore. It looks ugly now. It doesn’t go with the butter yellow cabinets and weathered wrought iron hardware!

I’ll get the other two drawers done today and then take a photo of the outside of the cabinet section at least. Ignore the junk on top of the counter if I post the picture here, where I most likely will do so.

I have to also put all the stuff inside so that we can get the other side of the kitchen cleared up. We’ll be taking the upper cabinets down too maybe and moving them to sit atop the counter of the lower cabinets for now. We have that new/old fridge coming tomorrow, so HAVE to make room :)

I’m ok with the re-do of the paint on the cabinets I’ve done so far. I have the right stuff for the re-do now, just need to do a few go-overs in a couple of grits of sandpaper and then a new coat of paint with the little cute rollers, but not for 7- 10 days. It’s just a wait to do it, and then I can fix all the little things that I have to and want to. :)

With the upper cabinets down on the counter top it’ll make it easier to work on them too (rather than have them on the floor).

So I have to go to work and move all that stuff now! Pictures here later!

Painting the cabinets saga drags on

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I’m very much not pleased with how the painting turned out on my cabinet door and drawer fronts, face of cabinets too. In actuality the “painted by brush” look that I was going for turned into a very-too-much thing, and now I have to sand that down and reapply with a little smooth roller to hone down the ridges.

I’m not trying to get a super smooth look. Just a “painted” look without deep ridges. So I’m bummed a bit about it. Dh just got home with a new little roller for me and the paint store dude said what I feared … I have to wait 7-10 days for Latex paint to sand it. It’ll just gum up before that. Tell me how I know THAT! :)

I knew it and tried to affect some icky things that happened to a drawer front. Somehow deep depressions were made in it, finger print gookies … I didn’t do that … so I am not accusing just saying, it’s a mess to look at, and sandpaper just squishes it around gooky gummy like.

So I need to just leave it all alone and install the hardware and then wait a week or more. THEN I can take the hardware off and start the fix.

Oh well, that’s life.

I know that Latex paint takes time to cure. It’s dry to the touch fast, but don’t you dare try to wash it –soapy water and rag or sponge or whatever, no scrubbing the first month of it’s painted life! For Sanding, as the paint store guy said, it takes 7-10 days of curing before it’s doable. I hope that’s true. It’s a long wait, but not as long as a 30-day wait as it might have been said. So it’s good news/bad news. Not so bad. Just slooowwww. At least I’m on slow-mode already. I’ve been busy, but taking it all sloowwww. :) On the slow-track to getting the kitchen done.

But I do need to get the lower cabinet re-filled for now and the door and drawer fronts on and all put together. The cats are ripping opened bags of noodles, raisins, etc. lately during the night. That’s the stuff that belongs in the lower cabinet as it was being used before the moving. It’s not entirely stuff that should be there, just the stuff that was there. Rearranging cabinets and usage and such is taking that slow-mode approach, and it’s only livable since I live in chaos anyhow, and it’s not so terrible. It’s just confusion of a mild degree and a circus to outsiders. It’s normal to me :)

Anyhow, this changes how I’ll paint the other cabinets. Practice makes perfect!

Locust Nursery

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A nutty thing I’ve been doing is collecting our Locust Tree babies. They are springing up everywhere in the circumference of that dear tree. It’s the only tree that existed on our property when we first moved in, November 1997. It’s right by the property line, so not quite all ours, but mostly. It gives late afternoon shade, it shields that western sun from baking that front corner of the backyard. It gives shade earlier afternoon too, just less, and that grows to a huge swath by mid-late afternoon as the sun moves across the sky. Every year the tree gets bigger and the swath of shade grows.

That tree was a little skinny “weed tree” as I called it when we moved in. It has grown magnificently. There is an offspring of it that sits in the pathway of our backyard gate. It should have been moved last year, or the year before. Lethargy of mowing stopped Frank from mowing as often, obviously, and that tree sprang up. It got very big last Summer, and has some branches that stretch high into the heavens, nearly as tall as the garage roof which the tree is next to. It must still be moved. I have a space for it all planned out, and several other babies in that nursery actually growing since a few weeks ago there. I have hopes of a nice Locust Grove.

On the deck I have several bowls and jars of various sizes, glass. Water babies inside. That’s water and babies. I haven’t counted them. Numerous ones there are. Over a hundred easily. They won’t all grow up to be healthy trees. If they survive my care and are actually planted one of these days, I’ll have to cull some of them of course. I can’t really let them all grow to tree-hood. That would be immensly stupid on my part. We’d have a Locust Forest before too many years given that.

I don’t know what variety of Locust Tree this big parent is, but it’s wild. It was there when the developer wrangled the soil for this subdivision in whatever year that was, 1995 or 1996. It was left there. Amazingly. I’m glad for it. It has become my friend, that’s for sure.

The first year we were here it had pods hanging from it. Those pods dried out and rattled and fell all over the place. Messy, yes, but it wasn’t so bad. The next year and following years it did not make pods. I’ve written about this tree before, recently too I think. Anyway, it did bloom in the last year or two finally. This spring the seeds from that podding are sprouting abundantly. My eye spots every one of them that is in open area. It’s a curse almost. I dig them out with my fingers. I have dirt embedded under my fingernails this season. It’s a disease, dig out baby locust sprouts.

So I take them to the deck and plunk them into water. They send up two leaves with their thick sprouting trunk-ish self. Those two leaves open out then the real locust looking leaves come up from that middle and spread … frondy and beautiful. That’s the stage to which I’m putting them in water to. From there I’ll plant some of them. I don’t know exactly what I’ll do, but I must put them in the ground. I put some, years past, in a planter, and they all died because I forgot to water them for awhile. Bad me.

So I will probably ask Frank to Mantis me out a plot of ground for Locust Nursery, and then maybe I can grow some fine specimens and get good at growing them and knowing what to do and what to look for in a good locust sappling. Maybe someone somewhere would like some of them. I don’t know. All I know is, they are free trees. They grow wonderfully, become great shade trees. They aren’t ugly, they are thorny, they do bloom fragrant tiny white blooms eventually then set up big green pods that turn brown and then rattle as they mature and dry out. They fall in autumn and winter to the ground, and in the coming years those pods open up and the brown thick little seeds germinate, sprout to become new trees, as long as they aren’t mowed over.

They aren’t climbing trees. They have messy pods, but those pods aren’t gooey, just abundant when they are formed. They are easy enough to rake up and dispose of. I don’t know, as I said, what variety of Locust this tree is, but here it is nice looking, and has bloomed for us only once in 7 years. It must have bloomed in Spring 1997 since the tree had abundant pods on it that September when we first saw the house being built.

I’ll find a picture of the tree from way back then, and find a recent photo of it to compare growth. I’ll see about pictures of the seeds and seedlings too.

Kitchen Update

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I’m finishing painting the doors and drawers for the lower cabinets that I’ve gotten painted so far. I’ll put the drawer pulls and knobs on later tonight or tomorrow, depending on how many coats of paint I need to do. Once that is all done I’ll take some pictures to put on this weblog in a post. :)

Forget the whole fridge thing. I deleted it. It’s not happening after all. Who cares. I don’t.