WW ~ An Apple Tree's Journey

With only a few leaves to speak of, this grafted apple tree was transplanted from my Mom's into our yard over two years ago on June 1st, 2009.

Each one of its six branches will grow a different variety of apples.

It sat quietly in our backyard through 2010, while continuing to grow.

And in 2011, we began to see some action. We saw little pink buds begin to form on her branches.

Those li'l pink buds bloomed into small white apple blossoms.

 

We have these guys to thank.

Can you see him?

 

What we thought for years were weeds (because they grow like crazy, we never planted them, and no matter how many times we take 'em out, they come back), though we now know the little blue flowers my wee girl loves to make me bouquets from are Forget-Me-Nots, have attracted the local bees.

And those bees went to work!

All their pollinating grew us eight apples this year. An unknown wild critter got one. He must have stood on his hind legs to reach it, but we could book the apple eating thief from the teeth mark evidence he left behind.

And then...

 

...we got to pick our very first apple off our apple tree!

It doesn't get any more organic, farm to table, green, easy, or delish that this!  The kidlets shared this one for breakfast the morning we picked it.

And the other six? Their Dad turned that into a GFCF apple pie! While it turned out mighty delish, we're still fine tuning the recipe for that one. Hopefully, I'll have it to share closer to the holidays.

What's growing in your backyard (or on a balcony or inside your house if you are sans yard)?

Linking up with some rockin' awesome Wordful/ish Wednesday peeps!

Seven Clown Circus, Parenting by Dummies, Project Alicia, Live and Love...Out Loud, Angry Julie Monday

One Little Word meets The Sketchbook Challenge

Yesterday, one of my kidlets said, "Mom, I want to see you get more crafty again." It was out of the blue, as they sat down for breakfast, before I was even really awake.

But, he had a point and I want that too!

A couple weeks ago, inspiration struck for The Sketchbook Challenge's March theme: Spilling Over and last night, I took my kidlet's advice and got to it.

It's the end of the first quarter of 2011 and a great time to check in with my One Little Word: ~Grow~.  And even better, combine it for an art journal page for The Sketchbook Challenge.

Last month, I updated my camera to a DSLR and I'm learning to ~Grow~ in photography.  And while that's a long happy process, I'm having fun clicking.  To include a bit of this growth, I upped the contrast on the photo I took of our now removed ash trees, to make it easier to trace the silhouette onto transparency with a fine tipped Sharpie.

While the simple printout of the pic isn't good quality, I went ahead and included it.

Under the transparency, I included the Her Face piece I wrote for a Red Writing Hood assignment at The Red Dress Club.  Outside of blogging, it has been quite some time since I've written creatively.  Writing along with prompts from The Red Dress Club and Microfiction Monday this year has allowed me to ~Grow~ here as well.

And on top is some simple acrylic paint, topped with my One Little Word: ~Grow~ and the synonyms that I've included in my One Little Word album that I'm working on for Ali Edward's class over at Big Picture Classes...one more area for me to ~Grow~!

Do you have One Little Word for 2011?  How have you incorporated it into your life so far?

  

Down Came the Trees

Drip, drop. Splatter, splash. Pitter pat of raindrops on the path. Sploosh. Gush. Dowwwwwwn comes the rain.

It's been like that off and on for a bit now.

Recently, we finally went ahead and had our two towering ash trees removed.  Even though we loved the trees, they were absolutely huge.  Ash trees are known for splitting and though we'd had several limbs pruned in the past, the cost of pruning them way back was about the same to have them completely taken out.

And over the weekend, I was at once very glad we made that decision.  It was not only pouring rain, but incredibly windy.  (Like funnel cloud formation and tornado touchdown in a nearby town...though hard to believe because this is so not tornado country!)  I would have spent the night worrying that the trees would come down on either our house or our neighbors!

Though, even when you know you made the right decision, it's still possible to miss the before picture.  You can tell how tall they were...the bit of house showing at the bottom, between the trees, is the gas vent/chimney that comes up above the roof line (and I still struggled to get that in frame!).

Bye-bye beautiful trees, we miss you, but definitely feel a lot safer!

We're thinking about what to plant in their place.  Maybe a fruit tree or two?  What would you plant?