Joy Comes in the Morning

For several mornings, we'd hear "beep, beep, beep" and that would alert us that bright and early, the workers on the right-of-way crews were unhooking the wood chipper and backing down our driveway to dump another load of wood chips.  We filled up all of our available space and had to tell them that we couldn't take any more.  That's too bad.  But we have all we need for now.

I zoomed in on the photo above to show you what is going on.  Can you see the steam rising from the wood chip pile?  It wasn't even cool outside, but the piles are heating up.  The chips are decomposing and bacteria growth is starting to work.  Pretty soon we'll see mushrooms growing on the piles.  Some will be edible and some not.  Eventually, all this stuff will make some rich compost.  I move it wagon-load at a time to the back of the garden and layer wood chips and cow manure, wood chips and more cow manure.

We did lose a couple blueberry bushes in the drought, but the ones that survived are loaded up with blooms.  Tricia made homemade blueberry muffins this weekend and they were absolutely delicious.  I asked her how many blueberries we had left in the freezer, hoping we'd not run out before this year's crop comes in.

The bushes are a-buzz with honeybees.  In our beekeeping class, they told us that honeybees can boost crop productivity by 30%.  I hope that is true.  Our bees are certainly working the bushes hard.  Hopefully, we'll have a great blueberry crop.

One thing we haven't had for the last two years is citrus.  The intense freezes we've had for the past two years have decimated our trees.  I spent the last two days burning the dead citrus branches that our neighbors cut off of their trees.  They even lost some.  The only citrus tree we lost was a lemon tree.  The navel orange tree was damaged, BUT, I'm seeing blooms on it!

Same thing with the 1 year old Owari satsuma tree.  We bought another satsuma tree at the nursery in town that is supposed to be more cold hardy (down to 10 degrees Fahrenheit).

This tangerine tree has very minimal growth on it, but it's a fighter.  It has some blooms on it.

My stroll through the yard was a joyful one.  We may have citrus once again!