Archive for The Gathering Place "The Gathering Place" is a web community where people can gather and make new friends, share ideas, enjoy a few laughs and learn about many interesting things together. It is a safe place where friends can correspond with each other about what they love.
Mary
Feb 13
In just a few places in my yard I see daffodils, tulips, crocus and hyacinths coming up. No swelling buds yet and no robins but I did see a red winged blackbird today. And of course the snow has almost all melted and that means MUD! This shouldn't be happening yet according to the calendar, not for about at least another month. Is your spring ahead or behind schedule?
Elena
Ours is ahead of schedule so who knows what will happen for the next few weeks? It is always scary because it can wreck havoc on the fruit trees and the yields. I don't have any of those any longer but I can remember in years past how sick we would get when we would lose our fruit because the trees would get fooled into blooming too early.
Mary
That was one reason for whitewashing the tree trunks, it reflected the sun and the tree didn't wake up so fast. It may have also discouraged crawling insects. We loose our fruit here quite often either to late frosts at blossom time or soon after, or early frosts in the fall before apples ripen. Yes, it is very disappointing.
Elena
I never knew why people whitewashed the tree trunks. I used to see it a lot but not any longer.
We just decided some time ago to just buy our fruit because.... between the spraying, losing the fruit because of late freezes and frosts, losing the trees because of diseases, fighting off the birds to try to get the fruit before they did, etc. it was just easier to go to the market and buy it for the two of us. It has proved better for the nerves also.
