Around our (Maryland) Yard in August 2013

August has been cooler and wetter than usual for us. The plants are growing vigorously. The butterflies enjoy the cone flowers and mint. Both plants will be in bloom for the rest of the season. I did a sequence of cone flower development from petals just unfurling to the beginning of seed pod development.

The blazing stars that were attractive to butterflies earlier in the season are developing seeds now. I’ve already seen a few goldfinches enjoying the earliest harvest.

The hydrangea is fading although some of the blooms will simply dry on the bush.

The chives are getting ready to bloom. In September they will be a highlight of the garden. There are some that came up too near the edge of the garden that I am pulling up and enjoying in salads.

And last but not least the dahlias. They are attractive in just about every way…large, robust flowers….glossy green foliage…there for butterflies and bees and wasps to enjoy.

Clearing away ‘Stuff’ - August 2013

I signed up for a charity to pick up stuff from my front porch in the next few days so now I am on a timeline to get as much as possible packaged up so that it can actually leave the house. The pile already identified is quite substantial but I am collecting more. Some decisions are tough.

The pile of shoulder bags and zippered notebooks that have accumulated over the years is a case in point. Some of them are ‘goodies’ from conferences, others are purchased. Most are canvas or tough synthetic fabric; a few are leather. They’ve all be used at some time in the past and most look somewhat battered. We used them as briefcases for work - or when we travelled. They’ve carried papers and books and calculators and laptops…coloring books and etch-a-sketch…clothes for overnight…lunch. But how many do we still need? Several of them had an identification tag with an address from 15 years ago; one had our address from over 30 years ago. The addresses have all been removed at this point; so have the pens and coins and dusty tissues and disintegrated tea bags. The next step is to convince my husband that most of them can go.

There is still a tremendous amount of stuff left to sort through around the house. I am willing to part with more now than I was a year ago. It feels good to be making progress on 'stuff reduction.'

Shelf Fungus Finale

A little over a year ago I started posting about the shelf fungus that were growing on an oak stump in our neighbor’s yard. In April of this year, the neighbor’s yard crew spreading new mulch detached the shelf fungus from the stump, tossing them into my yard. I collected the remains and posted a slide show summarizing their ten months of visible life. As a finale - before taking the pieces back to the compost pile - I looked at them more closely. The fungus reprocessed the oak stump into a very light-weight, spongy material.

The top of the shelf-fungus looks like it has growth rings. They are not ‘annual’ growth rings like trees since these fungus grew in a 10 month period and actually stayed about the same size after their initial few months.

The underside has a stalk where they were attached to the oak stump and there are fibers where they were ripped away. The undersides are relatively smooth.

I cut a wedge from one of the platters. The growth rings appear to be a surface feature only (i.e. they don’t extend to the interior). The top - where the rings appear - is a lighter colored layer on a brownish interior that appears porous and spongy.

The Wikipedia entry for shelf-fungus mentions that shelf fungus can be used as a wick for an oil lamp. It works! After soaking the wedge I cut in oil, it provided a nice almost smokeless flame as it sat in a saucer of oil. Rather than taking them back to the compost pile I’ll cut the shelf-fungus in pieces to use in the saucer of oil out on the deck. 

It would have been even better for them to continue growing on the oak stump….

Cookbooks

I am prompted by Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking to think about cookbooks. Does everyone that cooks have some reference they use at least occasionally? I have three that I use periodically - and almost always for some kind of bread or dessert.

The one I use most frequently is a Good Housekeeping Cookbook my grandmother gave me for Christmas just as I was beginning to help out in the kitchen - about 50 years ago. It was not something I used at first but I liked having such a ‘grown up’ present. I appreciated it more as soon as I was on my own in the kitchen - it was the book I had for guidance. The index is the most referenced part of the whole book but that doesn’t show. The splashes on recipe pages are obvious markers in the book and reveal the favorites. In this book it is corn bread, gingerbread, baked custard, popovers, applesauce cake, coffee cake, and apple brown betty (which I made with peaches at least as often as with apples). Now that I am looking at this book more closely….there is a yummy looking recipe for baked barbeque chicken (homemade sauce); it may be time to look at the other sections of this book!

There are only two pages that are food splattered in the Williamsburg cookbook purchased when I first visited Colonial Williamsburg: Christiana Campbell’s Tavern Sweet Potato Muffins and Sally Lunn. I’ve made the muffins with all kinds of variations: pumpkin instead of sweat potato, left over baked sweet potatoes, canned sweet potatoes, mini-muffins, muffin tops, raisins and nuts depending on what is on hand.

The last cookbook was one I inherited from my mother-in-law. I’m not sure whether it was something she had for years or that she bought not that long before she died at a used book sale. Either way - it has a wonderful spice cake recipe (that includes cayenne pepper).

After thumbing through these old books - I’m ready to try a new recipe!

Summer Heat

August is generally the hottest month of the year here in Maryland. Here are some of my favorite strategies for keeping cool:

Smoothies. Yogurt and frozen fruit - yummy and cool! It is my favorite lunch on hot days. I tend to freeze fresh fruit like bananas and oranges - or blueberries - so that they are extra frosty. Non-fat yogurt helps keep it well under 300 calories too!

Water. Get wet - either taking a shower in the hottest part of the day or swimming or spray cleaning the deck/driveway/screens/etc. (not bothering to avoid the spray while you’re at it).

Early outdoors. Do yard work (or other outdoor activity) early in the day before it gets hot.

Basement chill. If you have a finished basement - now is the time to enjoy it! Move your afternoon activities there.

Bare feet. I always feel cooler without shoes and socks. Even shoes as unsubstantial as flip flops make me feel hotter.

Enjoy your August!

Old Stuff

I am cleaning out a closet that contained boxes of stuff I have not used for years. Most of it is old - too dear previously to consider throwing away. Now I am applying 2 new criteria: 

• Is it something I would move to my next house?
• Can it be repurposed into something I would use now? 

If the answer is ‘no’ to both questions, it needs to be trashed or donated. It is still hard to make the decision and let the ‘stuff’ leave the house. Here are some examples of the decisions I’ve been making:

Doll. The doll that was my big Christmas present over 50 years ago has been in a box for years and years - from when my mother was cleaning out her attic and gave it to me. I moved it from Texas to Virginia and then to Maryland. I don’t think I want it enough to move it again. One of my sisters wants it - so it already has a path to leave the house gracefully.

Diapers. These are some that I bought as extras from when by daughter was a baby over 30 years ago. They are the pre-folded and stitched kind. I’m going to use them as the innards of quilted hot pads I am making (see fabric below).

Yarn. I don’t know when I bought some of the yarn; I don’t even like most of the colors any more. It all goes into the give away pile!

Owl macramé. I can’t bring myself to give away the owl even though it too has been in a box for years. It was made by one of my sisters. One of her other pieces is hanging in my office but I’d forgotten the owl completely. Is it a box that I just didn’t unpack when I moved to this house almost 20 years ago? I’ve hung it from a stair railing now.

Satin pillowcase. I had completely forgotten I had this. I remember that I didn’t like it because it was too slippery and am surprised I bothered to keep it. It does have a zipper closing which should work quite nicely repurposed as the top of a homemade laundry bag to protect delicate clothes in the washing machine.

Sewing machine and ‘stuff.’ 30 years ago I was still making most of my own clothes (including suits) and 40 years ago I was making my husband’s shirts. But the last item I made is 20 years in the past. So - most of this ‘stuff’ is leaving the house: a can of buttons, finishing tape and lace, pressing hams. But I decided to keep the machine. It was a wedding present 40 years ago and needed a good oiling before it would work properly. I still have the manual that showed where it needed oil! I made a few adjustments to the tension and the stitches look as good as when the machine was new. It’s never even had the belt replaced. My plan is to use up the fabric and thread I have (see next item) making hot pads, quilts and fabric/thread doodles with the machine.  

Fabric and thread. Somehow I have a lot of white fabric; there was a time that white blouses were what I wore almost every day with my suit! Then that ended when ‘business casual’ became the career attire and I still had a lot of white material left. I am going to use some of it for crazy quilt backing, save one piece as a Christmas tree skirt, and the rest will be cut into swatches for placemat sized machine doodles. There is also some Star Wars fabric that I used about 30 years ago to make a robe for my husband; it is heavy enough to make hot pads with it; he’ll be tickled with the reminder of that robe - probably the only one of his life that he completely wore out. Most of the other fabric is leaving the house. I am looking forward to using up a lot of thread; there were too many sales of 10 spools for a reduced price that were just too tempting during my sewing heyday. I can make some very dense fabric/thread doodles!

And that has been my adventure with old stuff over the past few days. It is wonderful to have the  the floor of the closet cleared!

The Joys of New Paint - Part II

It’s done! I posted mid-way through the project last week (here). After I posted, the crew put in a 12 hour day since rain was in the forecast for the rest of the week. The forecast was right! Two days of rain prolonged the job but as soon as the skies cleared and the deck dried, the crew re-appeared. The last of the repairs, painting, and staining was finished in about 4 hours. About three hours later, the rain started again.

Here is a before and after of a window repair. The house is as close as it can get to looking like new.

The big surprise of this exterior painting experience was the deck. It’s about 20 years old and the wood is showing a few ravages of time; in some places the grain is ridges because of previous power washings. This crew used a gentler wash and then brushed on stain. Wow! I find myself drawn to have breakfast on the deck among my plants every morning (when it is still cool and shady).

Since then we have been thoroughly cleaning screens and putting them back in the windows. The hardware store will replace the screen material in 4 screens (that had developed significant holes in the past few years). The new address plaque needs numbers and then installation beside the door. We likely won’t be as fast as the painters in getting our chores complete!

Today - I am celebrating the newly painted house that is home.

Mint and Orange Zest

Yesterday was full of wonderful smells: mint and orange peel.

I harvested two baskets of mint from pots and a reused turtle sandbox on my deck. The cuttings were clipped into segments that fit into my food processor. The processed mint is now on two trays on the kitchen counters. I’ll stir them several times a day until the mint is thoroughly dry ---- ready to use with black tea. There will be another harvest before the end of the season - enough mint to use now and last through the winter.

While I had the food processor out, I decided to make orange zest with the six oranges in the refrigerator and freeze the orange sections. During really hot weather, frozen orange sections are wonderful in smoothies so this was a good plan for the fruit and the zest. Only the white part of the orange peel ended up in the compost. I used a sharp knife to cut the outermost peel from the oranges- making long curls into the bowl of the food processor.

This is the first time there has been a bit of mint with the orange zest. I’ll enjoy that!

Around our (Maryland) Yard in July 2013

Our July has included enough rain to keep the yard very lush. I took a series of pictures looking up through the trees in our yard. The foliage in all the trees is in prime summer condition. I’ll do a similar collage in the fall.

Another series I am starting this month is watching the maturing of the tulip poplar seed pods. There is finally a branch low enough on our tree to watch the developments every month. The image on the right is what the two green pods will look like next summer.

The rest of the walk  around our yard is captured in the slideshow below. I appreciate the dahlias, blazing stars, zinnias and hydrangea bush this year because the day lilies have been so thoroughly enjoyed by the deer; the buds get eaten right before they open! I’ve included the green pyracantha berries; they’ll be a glorious orange in the fall.

The Joys of New Paint - Part I

Last year we had the inside of our house painted (posts: one, two). This year the exterior is being painted. It has only been about 5 years since the last time we had it painted but there were enough problem areas to get it done again and the painters we found for the interior were available for the job. There is not all that much to paint -- the front is brick and the siding is not wood (and does not need repair or painting). There is more than just simple painting of the house trim that the painters are providing though:

Replacing rotten wood around a couple of windows

Caulking

Cleaning and staining the deck

Washing the siding (all the dirt and stains are gone - and it is beautifully white again)

Painting the exposed walls of the basement in the back of the house

Repairing framing around the front door - which now looks like new and the new address plaque to the right of the door will soon be ready to be attached

I’ve been enjoying the daily progress. The crew got off to a fast start the first day; the weather was cloudy but dry and they put in a full day. The second day they ended about noon - the day cut short by rain. Will it all get done this week? It all depends on the weather!

As last year - I am impressed by the painters cleaning up at the end of the day. It is the same this year. During the day their painting supplies and ice chests are all over the front yard but when they leave their ladders and a few supplies are neatly stowed under the deck but otherwise there is no sign that there is painting in progress. 

Houses of the Future - A Wish List - Part III

The population of the world is growing. In the future, more of us will live in cities than in rural or suburban settings. This post focuses on what happens to the types of houses I would prefer for my home in that scenario.

Perhaps one way that ‘single family’ houses survive is to become embedded in food growing enterprises. Small parcels of land around a house, or groups of houses, could be tended by robots to become very productive either as general gardens or focused on specialized crops. Would this be the way the wealthiest live in the future? Or maybe this is what happens to old houses that are not engulfed by a city and have been retrofitted with new technology.

Even if we end up living in cities in high density buildings - not ‘single family’ houses - there are things that we can change about that environment to improve the approximation to the place I would want to live. My wish list for this future is: 

• Soundproofing between housing units is effective and universal.
• The advent of self-driving vehicles means that emergency vehicles no longer use sirens or horns (since they can cause the vehicles in their path to move out of the way via silent connectivity).
• Buildings are covered with plants tended by small robots. Green is the dominant color seen in views from windows.
• Elevated walkways separate foot traffic from vehicular traffic. Both sides of the walkway include plantings. The walkway itself is power generating.
• Outside lighting is directed downward and dim (or turns off completely) when the light is not needed by people in the area. The stars are visible in the sky overhead most of the time - or from upper floors of buildings.
• Sensors detect malfunctions or hazardous situations in the building (fire/smoke, plumbing, heating/cooling, ventilation, etc.) immediately and react appropriately….much faster than happens is buildings today. 

Previous posts in this series are here - Part I and Part II.

Around our (Maryland) Yard in June 2013

The irises have bloomed profusely and the chives have gone to seed by early in June. The pyranantha has tiny green berries that will be brilliant orange by fall.

The dahlias and lilies are very green; at least the lilies have a few buds that the deer have missed. Hopefully there is enough other greenery now for the lily buds to go unnoticed and July will be a riot of color in the front flower beds - yellow and orange and red.

There are tiny bits of color in the sea of green - a wild strawberry and overly sweet smelling flowers on one of our bushes. The bees were finding the white flowers very attractive!

The big surprise of the walk around the yard this month was the turtle shell with a big hole that was in the backyard. There were bones rattling around on the inside but the soft parts were long gone. There was a turtle that put in an appearance in our back garden several times a season for at least the past 10 years or so; the empty shell probably means that the turtle continuity for our garden has ended.

Houses of the Future - A Wish List - Part II

Today's post is from the perspective of configuration. There are certain type so floor plans that appeal to me for the future. The technology that makes a house generative and sustainable must be packaged in a way that faciliates the lives of the people that make it their home.

• The concept of ‘single family’ should change to be three generations in the house: children, their parents, and grandparents. Today almost all houses are originally built for two generations and then retrofitted to three as needed. With the demographics of the population shifting older and young people continuing to live with their parents longer, the trend in new housing should be to accommodate at least two adult couples…with three being even better. There are many ways this could be accomplished:
  • Using the same basic colonial house floor plan with walk out basement: increase the sound proofing between floors making the second floor for a couple with children, the walkout basement for a second couple; instead of a living room/dining room make a bedroom/sitting room for a single adult or a guest room. This arrangement could be a retrofit for an existing home.
  • Imagine a hexagon shape that contains a kitchen, eating area and den; this is the core of the house. There are wings from 3 of the six sides (evenly spaced around the hexagon); each wing includes a bathroom and bedrooms, home offices, etc. I’ve drawn a rough diagram below. The plumbing for the house would all be in the hexagon or the walls the wings share with the hexagon. There could be many variations of this basic design:
    • Basement under the hexagon only
    • Basement throughout
    • Some wings with two stories with outdoor bridges between the upper floors of the wings
    • A garden on top of a single story wing reached by the bridges from other wings and/or external stairs
    • One wing could have a laundry room and garage on the first floor and then have the rooms for living above
    • Various lot shapes and sizes could be accommodated by different lengths of the wings.
  • Keeping an overall rectangular shape, it is easy enough to achieve separate space for two adult couples. The shared areas - den, kitchen and eating area are in the center of the house and the separate space is on the sides. An outdoor area - side yards - can also be non-shared space. Again - there are variations of this design:
    • Configure this arrangement as a U instead of a rectangle. The inside of the U often becomes the shared garden area because it is primarily accessed from the core of the house.
    • The living space one side can be smaller to make room for a garage.
    • Basement - or not.
    • One side two stories - particularly the one that includes a garage. 

I’m sure over time I will think up more to add to this wish list....and I'll post them as a part III!

Part I of the series is here.

Houses of the Future - A Wish List - Part I

Single family houses have been the main places I have called home. There were a few apartments I lived in between the ages of 19 and 25…and an apartment we rented while we waited for our third house to be vacated so that we could move in; I always thought of the apartments as temporary and that is what they turned out to be. Of all the housing types available, the single family houses come closest to what I want in the future although I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what would make them better. Some of the items are possible now while others will require technological advances. Here’s my wish list:  

• All external surfaces need to be productive. They need to generate power or grow food. The paint, brick, siding, and shingles we’ve been using for years protected us from the elements but that is not sufficient for a house of the future.
• External surfaces and structural integrity need to be sufficient for the environment. In areas of high wind, heavy rain or snow, or extreme temperatures - houses need to be built to survive and remain habitable.
• Plan for older inhabitants. At least one suite and the main core of the house (den, eating area, and kitchen) must be accessible without stairs. The bathroom needs a large shower that is easily entered. Doors need to be wide enough to easily accommodate mobility devices (i.e. wheel chairs, walkers).
• A gray water system collects ‘slightly’ used water from sinks, showers, bathtubs, dishwashers, and clothes washers and then the water is used in toilets and for watering gardens reducing the water going into the sewer.
• The driveway and patio - any concrete or asphalt surfaces - need to be pervious pavement so that water soaks through rather than drains away too rapidly. If water drains from roof surfaces, it should be collected and used for gray water purposes. Again - this reduces the water that goes to the sewers.
• Yards have grass in areas where it is needed recreation (for example, a play area for children). Otherwise - the yard is either in native vegetation that does not need to be mowed/watered or used to grow food (vegetable garden, orchard) mixed with flowers.
• The inside of the house can be easily reconfigured as the needs of the inhabitants change over time. The number of internal walls is minimized; permanent walls are only built where they are needed for structure, sound proofing or privacy. Screens, storage units or sliders could be used a movable room dividers.
• Closets include shelves and racks to allow productive use of the space all the way to the ceiling.
• All rooms have some form of overhead lighting and ceiling fans.
• Heating and cooling is done to keep the temperature at comfortable levels in rooms that are in use at the time and the system is tunable for a particular person (for example, the room where an older person is located might be warmer in the winter time).
• Heating and cooling is done in the most efficient way possible for the area. In areas where geothermal (buried pipes) heat pumps are possible, this may be the way to go….or maybe there will be other technologies that will be even better. The classic gas (or heating oil) furnaces and electric air conditioners are not what we should be building in the future.
• Lighting is on when the room is occupied and it is needed. Otherwise the lighting turns itself off.
• Window coverings adjust based on temperature and are linked to the heating and cooling system. For example, on a  the window coverings will allow direct sunlight to shine in to warm the inside on a cold day to the temperature preferred by the person in the room.
• Kitchens need to function well for several people cooking at once.
  • If there is room for a center island, it needs to be counter space - not a stove top.
  • Ovens - microwave and conventional - are combined into one unit.
  • Water for drinking (and ice) is filtered.
  • Over counter cabinets go all the way to the ceiling to maximize storage space.
  • Task lighting is installed under the over-counter cabinets and comes on automatically when needed.
• At least one wall of each room is a ‘screen’ that displays art or functions as a computer display.
• Work from home is a growing trend - particularly for workers performing their jobs via computer. The house needs to be adaptable to support a work environment for everyone in the house.
• Modular construction may be a way to make new technology more accessible at a reasonable cost. The idea of a core of rooms (kitchen, eating, den) with all the utilities connected being built first with modules of rooms that plugged into those utilities is appealing both to allow for 'starter' homes and then enlargement of the house later by the addition of modules.
• No more items that are merely for ornament like shutters that don't close or dormers that provide no space on the inside. 

I’ll post the coninutation of my wish list tomorrow.

Ten Months of Shelf-Fungus

Last July (2012), a shelf-fungus started to grow on the stump of an oak tree that had died and been cut down in our neighbor's yard. I first noticed it while our power was out after the derecho. It developed rapidly during the first month and then changed slowly through the remaining nine months in the slide show. I am posting the series now as a memorial to the shelf-fungus. They were ripped off their stump by the yard crew spreading new mulch in April 2013.

July 2012

July 2012

July 2012

July 2012

July 2012

August 2012

August 2012

Sept 2012

Sept 2012

Oct 2012

Oct 2012

Nov 2012

Dec 2012

Dec 2012

Jan 2013

Jan 2013

March 2013

March 2013

April 2013

April 2013

Cherry Blossoms 2013

The weather caused the cherry blossoms to open late - and explode into bloom when some warm days finally came in April. The buds were already in evidence in early March; the picture on the left from our yard near Columbia, MD was taken on March 3. Then we had some very cold weather and the buds were only beginning to open on April 9th (picture on right).

By the 10th it was obvious that the blooms were imminent.

And then the 11th was the very best day for our cherry tree in 2013! The slide show below are my picks of the many pictures I took.

I was thrilled to have observed our tree during these days because I did not manage to get down to the see the trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington DC before the rains and wind took the blossoms to the ground.

Dandelions

The dandelions beat the application of pre-emergent on our lawn this year. We have quite a crop. The flowers are low to the ground so that the mower would completely miss them. One year I had my (young) daughter take a little basket and fill it with the flowers. She enjoyed plucking them as they nestled in the grass almost like an Easter egg hunt; but there were so many buds waiting to open and produce seeds that the exercise did not diminish the dandelion population in our yard.

I’ve read that the colonists actually brought dandelions as a garden plant - used for salads. The greens taste bitter to me although supposedly if they are harvested early enough they are less so. The flower petals add an interesting color to salad; they don’t have much flavor (which may be a good thing).

This year my husband has already started his battle with the dandelions by spraying them. We both know that it is likely a losing battle.

Plum Blossoms and a Butterfly

Our plum tree is in bloom this week, ahead of the cherry tree. Its frothy pink is the early tree color every spring. 

It is one of the best features of our yard in spring. It is a little late this year because of some recent cold days.   

The insects find it as attractive as we do. There were several kinds of bees and a single butterfly - one of the first this season - enjoying the blossoms. The butterfly’s wings were ragged….he had survived long enough to enjoy the nectar of the plum blossoms.

The Azalea Project

Every spring there are some major projects for the yard around our house that are unique to the year. This year one of those projects was planting azaleas to replace to bushes that broke under the strain of ice and snow a few years ago. We finally gave up on their recovery and dug them out last summer. When we went to the nursery to buy bushes last fall, we decided to wait until spring and plant azaleas. I had put it on the calendar as a March task but the spring weather has been so cold this year that we waited until last weekend.

Waiting the extra weeks meant that some weeds had started to come up where the bushes had been extracted. After getting the weeds pulled, loosening the soil and digging the holes was easy. The bushes we bought are projected to grow to be 4 feet high and 4 feet wide so we planted the two bushes 4 feet apart. The foliage on the azaleas is still somewhat bronze from winter. Will they bloom this year? Maybe not since I don’t see buds on them right now. I’m taking a strategic view; let them establish themselves this year and then bloom in the spring for many years to come.

There are irises planted to the front and sides of them now. That will give some color during late spring and early summer. Eventually some of the bulbs may have to be moved if they are too close or overshadowed by the bushes.

The day was so nice that I also positioned the stand for a new birdbath - pushing it down into loosened soil to make sure it was steady enough to hold the glass bowl.

What a satisfying way to spend a few hours!

Around our (Maryland) Yard in April 2013

We’ve had a cold spring in Maryland. The plum and cherry trees are not yet in full bloom so I’ll wait to post photographs of them later. The hyacinths and daffodils have been blooming for over a month. Perhaps the cold has kept them vibrant for longer than usual.

The iris, tulips and lilies are up. The deer have eaten the tulips to the ground and the lilies are only looking a little better because their foliage grows rapidly after the deer have eaten the above ground parts. The iris either have not been found by the deer or are not tasty enough for them. 

The chives and lemon balm are up in the garden. It’s been too cold to do the usual garden clean out so I tell myself that the old leaves make good mulch for the tender plants.

The edge of the woods has waning daffodils and spindly forsythia.

 

The maple branches have been trimmed so high that the only up close view of the blooms is finding a recently downed twig in the grass. The tree itself seems to be blooming unevenly this year. There are lots of red tuffs at the crown of the tree and only sparse ones in the middle and lower part of the tree.

Spring is here…getting more established every day. A few warm days will get us all out working on cleaning out our garden beds!