Thursday, April 30, 2009

Thrilling Thursday!

A few months ago we had an apple tree cut down in our back yard. It was the only large tree in our back yard. It was a nice shade tree, but the apples were not edible. Likely it was a variety called "Early Transparent" which is not known for it's tasty apples, but is good for cross-pollinating other apple trees. So, it was a beautiful old tree that gave nice shade and lots of rotten apples to clean up after in the fall. And maybe some cross-pollinating benefits for some neighbor's apple tree. Somewhere. But it was very old and starting to rot in places. And the few branches that had been grafted on were not producing good apples either, even though they were supposedly edible varieties.

So, the tree was cut down. And we've had an 18" stump in our yard since then that basically has just reminded me of how many things in our back yard we have gotten rid of or cut down to make it truly our own design. We got rid of a statue of Mary, mother of Jesus. We got rid of two LARGE metal poles that held up a clothes line. We got rid of some small tree in the back of the yard. I can't remember what it was, but it had berries on it and the birds liked it. We moved three rose bushes into the front yard. They had been trained as climbers and are now back to their proper height. You're welcome. We got rid of the stuff that supported the "climbing" roses. We re-purposed the cinder blocks that had been used to support some IVY(!) that decorated the fountain and cement pond in front of the statue of Mary the mother of Jesus.

Our backyard now is the home of a beautiful grape arbor with two grape vines, three columnar apple trees, a dwarf cherry tree, a clump of ever-bearing raspberries and a modest garden which will have Walla Walla sweet onions, zucchini, pickling cucumbers, red potatoes, Yukon Gold potatoes, and some tomatoes, probably beefsteak or Romas.

But I got side tracked didn't I? Today was thrilling because the reminder of the way our yard WAS is GONE! We had the tree stump ground up today. And now I have some wood shavings to put in my compost bin. I'm happy! And I'm looking forward to spending hours and hours out in God's creation this summer, part of which is in my backyard.