tree trimming

There is a raucous cacophony outside my door just now. A whole team of Mexicans are outside limbing my giant spruce and pruning up my apple tree. There are chainsaws roaring and chippers chewing and chopping and I can't concentrate to save my life. I will be glad for the extra light gained from losing so many giant branches. My cherry tree is rejoicing to watch its sister apple get cut down to size. I hope all my shade-happy plants don't rebel when they wake this summer to find themselves in the spotlight of the sun.

I have asked Jose to leave aside the long straight and hardy sticks so that I might make pyramids of them in my yard. I would like to have beans and peas and climbing things growing up the dying apple branches. My friend B's husband knows how to make all sorts of Eagle Scout knots, so hopefully I can enlist him in my efforts and we can tie them up just so. And I would like to have a few sticks leftover so that B can have a pyramid in her yard too. I can tell already that this summer promises to be among the all-time best and growing-est garden summers I have seen. Hopefully my shoulder will be up to the challenge. My knee seems happy enough, but if it isn't one thing, though, it is another. One thing is certain, my sturdy mid-western German farmer heritage stands me in good stead -I will soldier on despite whatever pain I must endure. The work will get done and the garden will grow and blossom and fruit.

One of Jose's team dropped a spruce branch on the phone cable and it is now dangling treacherously in the street. M is setting his face and suiting up in his best farmer gear to help out - gloves and all. The apple tree is getting the pruning of its life -a hard orchard cut. It will not fruit this year, but in the next year apples should abound.

The sun has come out to bless us.