Spring greenery

Boy. What a day I had. An exhausting, time-consuming problem cropped up at work, and petty, paranoid turf-war types conspired to make it more complicated and difficult than it really needed to be. But I got some help from different quarters, and a solution--albeit an imperfect one--was struck. But I'm pretty drained.

So instead of waxing poetic on any SFnal subject right now, I'll be content with reporting that spring has arrived in my yard. The Santa Rosa plum looks like a popcorn tree with all the blossoms bursting on it, and the Methley plum, along with the two pomegranate bushes, are leafing out. One of my incarnata passion vines and the affinis passion vine put up shoots in the past few days, but they were pretty tender and the combination of cool nights and bright daytime sun fried them. But they'll be back. I finally got around to pruning my pear trees and spreading the branches--mainly the Moonglow, but also the Warren to a lesser extent. I'm hoping for some good growth this season, and maybe some fruit next year. My biggest efforts, however, were reserved for my grape vines. I've got a muscadine that's struggled a little in my alkali soil, so last summer I took one vine and ran it through a soil-filled pot to try and get it to root. It did indeed root (layering works, and is easy!) so today I cut the vine free from the parent plant and potted it up. There are several more moderate sized vines I plan to do the same way in the next week or so. My other two vines are both Orlando seedless, a self-fertile variety I chose mainly for its resistance to Pierce's disease. They've done a little better in my soil, and had a lot of wild growth I needed to prune back. I cut the vines back to two leaders which I've trained along the top of the dog run fence, and hope to have some good growth again this year. Last season they set flowers but didn't set fruit. I'm hoping for better luck this year. The remaining pruned vines I cut into 12"-18" lengths, bagged up with moist peat moss and placed in the refrigerator. I've got maybe two dozen of them, and ideally most of them with mature into viable grape cuttings. Next week is spring break at the university, so I should be able to clear them out of the fridge and set them up to begin developing calluses and roots.

Don't I lead an exciting life?

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