Moving the roots.

I love Valentines Day!  We planted fruit trees years ago on the land. It was a good time to do it. (See older posts)  It was especially fitting for Valentine's weekend to move them to our urban homestead.  The deer have really taken a toll on them, gnawing and grubbing them.  Now they are replanted as bare root trees in the back property line of our house.  The Fuyu Persimmon, I planted on the front yard picket fence for its showy fruits.

The list includes:
Red Delicious Apple
Golden Delicious Apple
Elberta Peach
Balwin Pear
Spalding Pear
and two more I really can't identify, which is why I am writing these ones I know down in the blog, so I can possibly remember later.

The trip out to the land was wonderful.  We picked up some redwood pickets I have been saving and stockpiling for use on our new picket fence.  We spent a wonderful time with a picnic on the old quartz rock and dreaming of our house and ranch.  After many design changes, it is no surprise we came back with a new idea.  This time we are taking a very direct approach to the house design.  Let's get on the land as fast as possible by building a straight forward farmhouse directly on the site pad we have cleared, no twists, no complexities...  Ok, we'll try.  As two architects working together on their own home, simplicity is the hardest approach.  But the day was so spring like that we had a hard time leaving the land and were willing to do anything to settle on a design.  We snuggled on the sofa that night going through Google images of rustic farmhouses and scouring our architecture library for ideas and discussion points.

Meanwhile, the fruit trees will look great in our urban lot this spring when buds and blooms blossom.  I'll take pictures once they open.  And we will do without the deer's attempts at fine pruning.  We fully intend to re-transplant the trees once the farmhouse is built.

Valentine's gift of Apple Trees

Valentine is a day for homemade gifts in our household. This year Christi ordered me our first fruit trees for the farm, but the trees came too late to be gifted for Valentine's Day. As a present for me to open, she made me an unfolding, growing card of an apple tree and poem.

It was so thoughtful of her to gift fruit trees. Our first house had peach trees that I had cultivated. In the middle of urban Houston, I had tilled up the St Augustine grass to plant an herb garden with 4 white peaches (200 chill hrs) and 3 MidPride peaches (300 chill hrs), 3 Anshiner (sp?) apples and 3 Reverend Morgan apples. This last spring, the peaches outdid themselves and the Midpride produced the best fruit I or Christi had ever eaten. We made peach chili all summer long. Houston had very low chill hours, so I would need to learn all new varieties for Arkansas.

Understandably, Christi wanted to get started growing fruit right away! As a tease before we truly set our garden plans, she bought one Golden Delicious Apple (700 chill hr) and one Red Delicious Apple (800 chill hr) as a pair to symbolize our love. She also added one more branched bare root tree to get free shipping, lol, an Alberta Peach (800 chill hr).

Never too early to plant a tree. The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago.