Thinning (apples & colleges)

A photo of apples I thinned from our trees, and news about our massive upcoming college tour.

Thinning
Thinning

I spent most of a day last week thinning apples from our two apple trees. These poor things had struggled in the shade of the boulevard trees for most of their lives, but as we’ve lost most of our boulevard trees in the last few years, these apple trees have come into the sun and finally started producing fruit. This year one of them in particular set a ton of fruit, so while I bagged apples, I also thinned, at least where I could easily reach.

In the end I bagged around 150 apples, and probably thinned off at least twice that in little baby apples. Now we wait for a wonderful crop of nummy apples in the fall!

In quasi-related news, this afternoon Thomas and I embark on a monster road trip through New England. The purpose of this adventure is college visits, and we’ll visit 11 colleges in 30 days: Kalamazoo (Michigan), Ithaca (NY), Hamilton (NY), Bates (Maine), Hampshire (Massachusetts), Marlboro (Vermont), Vassar (NY), Drew (New Jersey), Swarthmore (Pennsylvania), Yale (Connecticut), and Brown (Rhode Island). Whew!

This will be the last college tour, so hopefully he’ll have a pretty good idea of where he wants to apply after we get home.

The real reason for the trip, though, is to allow me to catch several states I’ve never visited (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine). After this trip I will have visited all but two of the 50 states: Hawaii and South Carolina. South Carolina is annoying because I’ve driving within 20-30 miles of South Carolina at least twice, but never actually made it. Hmph.

The trip might provide some photo opportunities, so I might actually post a little in July :-)

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Another one bites the dust

Photo from the removal of yet another elm in our neighborhood has succumbed to Dutch Elm.

The remains of a fine old elm removed due to Dutch Elm.
The remains of a fine old elm removed due to Dutch Elm.

Another elm in our neighborhood has succumbed to Dutch Elm, making 5 or 6 big boulevard elms that have been removed around our corner in the last few years, and there are a few more nearby whose days are almost certainly numbered. This one was from right across the street, and there was a wee bit of panic when we realized what was going on, because the tree and equipment were about to block our driveway less than 15 minutes before we Sub-Evil Boy and I had to take off for Prairie Fire Theatre Camp.

These were gorgeous old trees, which provided us with shade in the summer and shelter from January’s bitter north winds. They will be missed. We lost all three of our boulevard elms in the past three years, and it’s already made a very noticeable difference to the lawn, gardens, and house.

We’re working on planting new trees, but those will be more for the next generation than ours.

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