Fruit Trees are Sprayed and Budding!

Yesterday I got to work spraying the trees with the Lime Sulphur & Dormant Oil. Wow what a stinky mix but it needed to be done before any 'green' came out. I did all 5 fruit trees. Today, the buds are really changing, actually every day things are happening on these trees... its pretty cool!

Apricot Tree Buds

Peach Tree Buds

My Plum tree has shoots coming out all over the place so even though I was worried about it due to the lack of roots it came with, its seems very happy!

Nectarine Tree Buds (some are showing bits of pink blooms)

Kona's apple tree of course is coming along nicely as it did last year too

Our trees on the side of the yard are happy, bees are buzzing all around

The dangers of gardening in the Okanagan... insects are huge out here! I found a cricket when I was filling holes Kona dug in the yard with pieces of sod I removed from the fruit tree area... what an ugly little monster!

Yuck... he wouldn't flip over... playing dead I guess. I only caught him so I could send pictures to Katie's kids in California who are on the hunt for bugs daily!

Brian all bundled up and set up in front of his BBQ... we sure love BBQ here!

Dirty Face...

I was a bit surprised when Kona came into the kitchen looking like this! Clearly there was something good in the dirt!

The End of a Quick Visit

Before heading home ....

Checking out Mom's Greenhouse plants...

New Plants in the garden

Max and Kona hanging out

We decided to go for a walk at the park and went just a little bit too late because the rain hit...

Lucky we all had umbrellas!

After a cold windy walk in the rain, hot chocolate at Tim Horton's was in order!

A quick stop at Dad's place and back to Julie's to paint everyones toe nails and then Kona and I were on our way home!

We stopped in Merritt for a quick hike up the mountain...wow was it nice, but windy!

It was such a pretty spot for nice pictures!

Kona getting annoyed with me....

Kona really annoyed... lets get going!!!

Brian made us hamburgers for dinner on our new BBQ! We had to get a new one because its BBQ season and our old one went to the dump last fall (it was so old and there was a rat living in it)

A Quick Trip!

Kona and I took a quick trip to Abbotsford! Kona sat so nice in the back seat of the car!

Having Sushi with the girls!

Sophie wasn't willing to eat much but I convinced her to try the veggie sunomono, that was a hit!

I ended up eating Sushi twice today! I went back later on with Dad for dinner... I really can't get enough Dake Sushi!

Fruit Trees are planted!

Ready for the worlds most boring photos? Haha... I planted our fruit trees today! I got 4 varieties... Wescot Apricot (I am sure my family is not surprised I got that) Glohaven Peach, Shiro Plum and Red Gold Nectarine. We decided to make getting the fruit trees in a priority this year over other things because they will take more time to grow and produce fruit. We will see what happens this year, but I am crossing my fingers for next summer! We already know we have a winner with the MacIntosh Tree in the yard! I am going to get that pruned any day now and make sure I thin out the tree to get bigger apples... so many things to learn! All I know for sure as that these apples we just so good and everyone I gave them to raved about them!

The Okanagan is very sensitive to proper care of fruit trees as its such a major industry out here... so I bought the spray and a sprayer bottle (super neat) and am ready to go... just have to read the instructions!!

Me with the Peach Tree

Wescot Apricot Tree

Glohaven Peach Tree

Shiro Plum Tree

Red Gold Nectarine Tree

My Garden Project... Getting ready for Fruit Trees

So we have a lot of garden/yard projects to do, especially since our front yard is torn up from the sewer hook up. We want to build a veggie garden, put in fruit trees, re-do the grass in the front and back, re-edge the back yard, do some edging and grass features in the front, re-do the front yard irrigation... and so on and so forth. Discussing where to start and what is first and how much work it really all is? Oh man... so everything mentioned there... will get done over a few years. I decided to start with the fruit trees as I want to get those in this year so that we get fruit in upcoming years. I am going to put in 4... and have to admit, getting the garden bed ready for it was a lot more work than I thought. I put in time on this both days this weekend and I am sore now!

This poor tree has looked the same since we moved in... last spring it sprouted maybe 4 green leaves but otherwise has looked like this... dead... time to go!

I started clipping away all the branches to keep things neat... Kona is surveying the damage...

Ok, time to dig it out!

Amazingly it was pretty easy to get out, the roots just needed to be snipped

Now that the tree is out, I pulled up all the landscaping fabric and dug out a trench for new edging to be installed

Oh I made a mess...

And now, here it is all cleaned up! I had to remove 3 dead shrubs from against the fence too... what a lot of work!

Now I am ready for putting in my fruit trees... I am thinking Peach, Nectarine, Golden Plum and Apricot! I just have to wait for the local nurseries to bring in stock.

Did someone flip a switch?

Did someone flip a switch? It became spring over the past couple days! Everything is melting... it was up to 15 degrees today (but windy so it didn't feel that warm). Brian got his plates for the bike and is off some where, the dogs are enjoying the sun on the deck and I have been playing with Elliott's camera that he so nicely lent me... I have 3 weddings to shoot this year and 2 of them are in the sunny Okanagan... I have to start practicing on these bright days!

Treats...

It must have been a good treat... Tag doesn't normally hide on us when he has something good! Haha

Sewer Hookup Complete

After 3 full days of work... Friday, Saturday and Monday... our new sewer and water lines are hooked up, filled in and we are $7500 poorer. Apparently we got a great price for the work, and we are not complaining, its just a lot of money... and its truly great to have it finished. The front yard doesn't look good by any means, but we weren't going to have the excavator continue on at $80 an hour to push snow around. We need to landscape and redo the lawn anyhow so once things melt and we have the energy, it will be back to pretty hopefully soon!

No work today!

You wouldn't even know there were huge crevasses in our front yard! Lucky it's Sunday and nothing is happening today...

What Lies Beneath.... Day 2 - Emergency Sewer Hookup

The dump truck left the sand in our driveway last night so it wouldn't freeze in the truck

Caution tape was left around the hole as a warning so hopefully no one would fall in over night! haha... you would hope no one would be that dumb

The guys arrived around 7:45 am and got back to digging. It wasn't long before they were working in the trench.

This is the sewer connection being joined up. The orange line is the gas line so they had to be very careful working around it.

A view from our front window. Sometimes it looked like nothing was happening, but they were all just in the trench so you couldn't see them!

Unfortunately they hit boulders and had to re-route for the water line. They said it was pretty nerve racking pulling out the boulders around the fragile gas line.

The re-route...

Believe it or not... the water and sewer are all connected and the sand is going in!

More sand!

We were truly concerned the job was going to go into Day 3 on Sunday, however by the end of the work day, everything was back up and running! The pipes have to lay exposed until Monday to have an inspector come and sign off on it so we have to leave 1 tap running for probably 48 hours but that is only so our water line doesn't freeze up while it is laying exposed to the elements. After the inspection on Monday the guys will fill in the trenches and the septic tank and we are done! Once the spring & summer hits, Brian and I will have to replace the irrigation lines that were broken and fill any areas that have sunken in from settling once the weather warms up and the ground unfreezes. Normally they would do all this for us (and can still for a price later) but because of the time of year... not much can be done right now! The last scary part will be the bill.The original quote was 2-4k thinking spring time, Friday's quote was 3-5k but since then we added in the water line and a few other little things that needed doing so I think we are going to run about 6k for the job... ugh.... ugh... ugh... but totally worth it. I keep thinking about it and we had no choice, the septic was finished.