In January. *eye roll*
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| One of my cherry trees :( |
I wouldn't mind, EXCEPT that my trees, particularly my fruit trees, have started to bud out. If they blossom now, and then we get a freeze (which, hello, we will because it's JANUARY!) it's bye-bye fruit for the year. No bueno.
Also, you are supposed to prune your trees while they are still dormant. Usually you are okay doing this is February/March, but if my trees are budding in January, there's a chance I'll miss their dormancy period, and my pruning window.
That wouldn't be horrible. But my trees are already WAY over-grown....my guess is that nothing in my yard has been pruned for at least two years. For example, check out this apple tree.....
I was so confused by it in the fall because it produces yummy, sweet apples (in other words not a crab apple) but is looks just like a bush. There is really no "trunk" part.
I had to get on my homesteading facebook page and ask about it. An arborist on there told me that the tree looked like it used to be an espalier but that it had been badly neglected, and that it would be impossible to get it back to what it used to be. For $100 he would have come out to look, and helped me come up with a plan of where to take the tree next. I was tempted.
I would LOVE to learn how to prune from a professional. But, in the end I decided that I am not $100-worth attached to this tree. So, I'll do my best with it on my own, and if it doesn't work and we end up ripping it out and planting something else instead....that's the way it goes. Now, if it was a peach tree....it might have been a different story. Peach trees are "my preciouses".
The other tricky bit, is that with pruning you can only take off about 1/3 of the tree (or less) per year without risking damaging the tree. So getting this one under control is going to take years of work. All my trees are.
So on that temperate January Saturday of a few weekends ago, I rolled up my sleeves, got out my pruning sheers and went to work in the orchard. And, oh! How incredibly gratified I was to be outside working among my trees. Rejuvenation. Renewal. Nature and my soul.
I wasn't the only one out working in the yard either. At my insistence, the whole family was. :) Aaron was trying his hand at taming our willow hedge.
Have I mentioned our willow hedge before? So, the previous owners decided to plant a "living fence" because the lot is a corner lot and we are technically not allowed to have a fence, or at least there are restrictions on what kind of a fence you can have. But there are not restrictions (apparently; I haven't actually looked up the code, I'm just going on their say-so) about things growing next to the fence, so if you can make a living fence, you get your fence and you comply with city code.
I love the idea of a living fence for two reasons, 1: It feels like breaking the rules but it isn't. 2: LIVING fence!! This resonates with every fiber of my being. It goes hand-in-hand with my other belief about edible landscaping. No, my willow hedge isn't edible. But to take something generally non-living and replace it with something living seems to fall under that same paradigm for me. Not sold yet? Get on Pinterest and search for "willow hedge" or "living fence". The idea of it is just too cool to pass up. It's one of my favorite things about our new house.
But, like every other plant on my half acre, it's been neglected and overgrown. I don't want the fence to be unruly. I want it to enhance the curb-appeal of the house. Especially because we are boarder-line rule-breaking, if our neighbors ever called to complain the city might get very technical with us. And I don't want that. But if it looks nice and well-maintained, I don't see how anyone would have a problem with it.
So we topped it. At about 12 ft high. I would say it was close to 20 ft in places. I only need it to be high enough to keep the deer out, and I don't want it tall enough to block my view of the mountains. Plus the idea is, if the willow can't grow tall, then it will focus on growing out, making the bottom thicker and providing us with more privacy. :)
Another aspect of managing the willow hedge is to bend down the branches to train them where you want them to go. The previous owners started the rounded, bent-over look, so we'll stick to that form; but you can do just about anything you can imagine with the shape when starting your own hedge. I really like the diagonally trained ones that create a diamond pattern. If I were ever going to start from scratch with a willow hedge, that's what I would do. But I like the rounded off look of what we already have as well. So now it's just a matter of continuing on with it.
I'm a fan of Instagram, and I was playing around with their Stories feature and talking about my willow hedge. The only downside is that Insta only allows videos in 15 second segments, which, honestly, is SUPER annoying, and probably why I don't do Insta-Stories more often. But I also like them, because it feel almost like having a short conversation with someone. Anyways, like it or not, here is my Insta-Story about my willow hedge, inconveniently spliced into eight fifteen-second segments for your viewing pleasure. If nothing else, it allows you to see the willow hedge more clearly than you can in a still photo.
So what do you think of willow hedges? Kinda fun, right? I'm just super grateful the previous owners decided to try one out, because I don't know that I could ever convince Aaron to do one out-right (he's never very certain about all my wild ideas and the amount of work they might entail)....but inheriting and maintaining one that's all ready there is a different matter completely.
Also, can we all just pray for some snow, for the love!
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