My mother-in-law wanted two apple trees and an oak tree We discussed this last week.  She said there was a nursery in Hermiston where we could get trees.  I got a budget and had plans to do this sometime.  Sometime for me is very vague.  It could be next week it could be a couple of months or a couple of years.  Just ask any of the woman in my family!  I opted for sooner rather than later.  Annmarie and I had been talking about putting fruit trees back in the orchard field for years but I had never gone and gotten any trees.  Every tree has to have a rigid cow panel formed into a ring placed around it and some narrower wire wrapped around that with T posts holding it in place in at least three spots to keep the all animals away.  The cow panel adds a $25/tree expense.  Now the nice thing is the cow panels can be removed after the tree is beyond 2.5 inches thick.  The deer don’t like to rub on larger trees.  Annmarie and I went over to the nursery yesterday.  They had a 50% off on all trees and outdoor plants.  So we loaded up!  We got two different varieties of bunch grass for the front hillside and two different types of ground cover.  I am going to concentrate all the small plants on the right side of the hill by the wagon to see how they do next year.  We have seven fruit trees for us and one shade tree for our front yard and a shade tree for Donna and two apple trees for her.  Here are the tree types, Oak, for triangle at Donna’s, Arkansas Black apple and honey crisp apple for down by Donna’s house, Crimson Sunset maple for our front yard, 20th century oriental pear, Granny smith apple, Brooks prune, Honey crisp apple, Nectarine fusia, Red plum and Chinese apricot for our orchard.  I talked to the nursery about ordering full size apricot trees but I would need to order five trees.  I may still do that. 
We had to lay the two tallest trees down and then go back via the back roads.  At a max speed of 40 mph with an average of 35 mph it took quite a while to get back home.  I tried to follow Siri’s directions instead of going the Holdman route and she took us to a closed road with no throughput.  So we went the Holdman route.  Now I need to dig lots of holes in super hard ground with the tractor.  Once the holes are dug I am going to fill them with water for a few days to get the surrounding ground saturated.  It will make it easier to keep the trees watered once I get them in the hole.  We are going to use the ancient sheep waste compost dug out of the barn to root the trees in their new homes.  Today I will go buy some more cow panels.  In a five years there will hopefully be lots of fruit! 
 

Trees!

Our nursery purchases.

New gate and fence.

Gary came out today to spend some time helping me.  After a fantastic potato, onion, bacon, and egg scramble breakfast we went out to install the new fence.  The professional victim alpaca needed a permanent fence.  I figured a gate was needed but I did not want to install four railroad ties.  I opted instead to just put one on each side of the gate and attach them at the top so they could not be pulled apart by the wire.  It worked pretty good.  We will see how it lasts over the next several years.  Annmarie had told me that the alpaca won’t test a fence so we strung the first wire at 20 inches and then two more strands above that.  This would allow the sheep to just graze under the fence if we put them in the orchard.  It took longer to set everything up and dig the holes than the rest of the fence install.  This is an awful time of the year to dig a hole or even drive T posts into the ground.  Once we had that done we pulled up all the old T posts that were installed years ago with wire to keep the animals away from the trees.  Now I need to bring over the cow panels and make them into rings.  This will keep the animals from all the new trees.  We cleaned up all our mess. 

This late evening when Annmarie came home the professional victim had gotten out of his new area.  He crawled under the fence!!  We went out and caught him, and put him back in his area.  I then grabbed another roll of wire and added a lower strand to the length of the fence.  We are hoping this keeps him in his new enclosure. 

I went out and attempted to dig three holes for new trees.  I spent over 30 minutes on each hole and only got down one foot.  I finally gave up and filled the holes with water.  I added water a couple of times and will try it again tomorrow.  I am hoping to get to the nursery this week. 

Fence crossed the ditch.

Front fence done!

The weather was perfect today.  No rain and not too hot.  I went out and spent 4.5 hours and finished staining the front fence.  I would do one side, switch sides and then go back to the other side.  It needed two coats of stain. 
It was only 1600 so I decided to go to the back yard and finish digging dirt.  I thought it would only take thirty minutes.  An hour later I was still shoveling dirt.  I finally broke down and drug the soil back into the ditch and drove the tractor over it back and forth to compact it.  I found another marble!  I have found six very old marbles digging in the back yard.  Most in pretty good shape, the one today was a great color but it had some cracks in the glass.  I am all ready for gravel.  We were going to lay down 3/4 minus gravel and fill the last two inches with pea gravel.  I talked Annmarie into letting me just use the 3/4 minus.  It will save about $400.  I will still use paver sand over the deck area to make a rigid surface.  Plus, I will be compacting the gravel as I fill it in.  I have a little block left over so I think I will lay it on the lawn edge.

Front fence done!

Last night, at bedtime, the alpaca started throwing a fit and yelling and fighting with each other.  I heard it and tried to go to sleep.  Annmarie asked me if I wanted to check it out.  I did not.  So she went and checked, which meant I had to get out of bed anyways.  The temporary fence keeping the other alpaca away from the designated scapegoat had fallen down.  The other alpaca were in there beating up on the little black alpaca.  Annmarie hollered at them and he came running to her at the gate.  He knows she will protect him.  She let him into the yard and now I need to build a better fence.  So tomorrow I will be building a new fence for the odd man out.  It will need to cross the front ditch so he has access to water year round.  I am still waiting on the shears to come back from Premier.  They shipped them on Friday so they should be here soon.  I will finish the alpaca once the shears arrive. 

Back garden and deck all ready for gravel.

We are going to put down gravel so there is no mud on the way to the root cellar.

It RAINED finally!  The weather person said it had a 15% chance but the clouds said higher when I looked up into the sky so I held off on painting the front fence.  Two hours later when the rain was pouring down I was mighty glad I had not done any painting.  So I went upstairs and spent that time cleaning the trash out of Sarah’s room.  I am up to eight or nine garbage bags so far.  I told Annmarie she would have to go through the clothes.  Sarah wanted some reading material mailed to her so all the classic books I had purchased over the years were stashed on her bookshelf.  I sent her a book of short stories by Jack London, Catcher in the rye, The Pearl, Tom Sawyer, The Help, All creatures great and small, All things bright and beautiful, and some other award winning books. She is trapped so I suspect they will all get read.
Late that afternoon I did get outside and shoveled dirt away from the cellar area.  It doesn’t look like it rained but it really did.  I moved as much dirt as I could over next to the house.  The water running off the roof for the last 80 years has caused the dirt level to drop within three feet of the house.  I want to fill all that in and raise the level up near the house.  I got an hour of digging in before dinner.  Between cleaning up Sarah’s room and the digging I made some good progress.