peaches and pruning

the weather is perfect today - sunny and comfortably warm with a slight breeze.  perfect for canning.  this afternoon, i poached some peaches in water, sugar, orange and lemon juices, filled some ball jars, and processed them in boiling water.  peaches are absolutely my favorite fruit and the season for them is always too short.  i've finally gotten around to drying some figs.  the trees are full of them, and it looks like we'll have ripe figs for a few more weeks.

i picked our first zucchini, summer squash, heirloom beans and one tiny bell pepper.  the garden was in a bit of chaos after a huge branch from an adjacent coral tree snapped and landed smack in the middle.  ace tree came to the rescue yesterday (with 3 trucks!), to trim and mulch the branches (along with a huge pile of accumulated wood).  between the wind (which drops a few big branches every year) and heavy duty trimmings (every 2-3 years), we always seem to have a large pile of wood in the backyard .  the first year we trimmed all the olive trees, i couldn't believe how much wood was dropped and how expensive it was (nearly every improvement or maintenance project seems to cost about 5 times more than i imagine).   it took a crew of about 6 men an entire day to trim and mulch the branches.  james is handy with a chainsaw and does alot of trimming himself, pruning fig and pomegranate trees yearly after harvest.  the following summer, we'll use the wood for smoking meat.

during our first year, we decided to plant a hedge along the chain link fence in the front and side of the property (which sounded so simple).  we took a field trip to sperling nursery and decided that we liked brush cherries.  then we figured out how many trees we'd need (about 200). at sperling's prices, it would have cost a small fortune for a hedge, albeit a very long one. fortunately, our neighbor owns a wholesale nursery and was able to buy them for us at almost half the price.  james rented an auger to attach to the skid steer, we bought a gazillion bags of compost and spent a whole weekend drilling holes and planting brush cherries.  i'm still amazed that we did it ourselves.  we actually met some of our neighbors for the first time when we were out on the street, shoveling dirt.

the most impressive tree experience we've had so far involved transplanting about twenty, 75-year-old olive trees from the lot next door.  just after we moved in,  john laing homes (the evil empire) received a variance to build 40 mcmansions on 14 acres next to us.  the lot was part of the original olive growers association lands and was covered with beautiful, old olive trees.  one of the conditions of the variance (which allowed them to build a house on 7000 sq. ft, rather than 1/2 acre) mandated keeping many of the existing trees on the land.  being a sneaky, profit-at-any-cost kind of company, they found a way around this.  they hired an arborist to certify that all of the trees were diseased or unhealthy.  we negotiated to take 10 of the trees, and plant them along our property line as a screen.  they boxed the trees, lifted them out of the ground with a crane and onto a huge flatbed trailer, then drove them 50 feet onto our property.  it was quite a spectacular sight.   then, they were lowered by crane into holes about 8 feet deep, buried, and flooded with water.   john laing homes boxed an additional 10 trees, which they later planted on our property at no charge as a peace offering, after they broke a mutual written agreement involving block walls (but that's another story).  sadly, the rest of the trees were carved up and thrown away as trash.  now, there is not one olive tree on "los olivos road", nor is there one horse in a k-zoned development advertised as "your home in the country".

in the end, 7 of the olive trees we planted never came out of shock.  the rest are doing well and will be trimmed when the weather turns cooler.  we'll be seeing lots more of ace tree this fall and winter.  this time, we'll be trimming on the installment plan.