Awareness is key... for avoidance of problems

 We headed out to the larger farm today to try to track down the apple trees. Sounds weird, I know. Like, who the hell can lose an orchard? Of course, if you met my Mom... you wouldn't ask such things, it is a given.

 Sorry.. sometimes there is only so much anti-logic one can deal with before they get tired of bashing their head against a wall trying to accommodate the insanity snippy. Example.. giving away the spools of chicken wire after asking your son-in-law to put the chicken coop here... (rocky area gets cleared of waist high grasses by hand)... no wait... over there... next area cleared... wait, wait... over there. The whole area is littered with limestone boulders hidden in a sea of grass. Did I mention it is sloped too? All of that... is a drop in the bucket-of-fun we have been wading through trying to get things going.


 Bah... back to finding the trees swallowed up by the forest...  After hiking well over a mile we found a couple apple trees! A few sapling apples as well, but they are well snacked on by the deer, but still alive. The trees are in really really rough shape (over crowded, fungus, etc.), but one is so far loaded with fruit and another that has some fruit set!

 We found several mulberry trees, wild plums, staghorn sumac, wild grapes (look at the top.. that vine growing up the silo and is through out the tree..a wild grape), some horseradish, a few errant chives barely surviving, lots and lots of wild blackberries covered in buds (a few blooms have opened), lots of wild roses, and many gooseberries with itty bitty baby pea sized berries growing.. 

 I was particularly thrilled to see the huge old pear tree had a little life to it yet. It has been nailed by lightening which killed 1/2 of it, and then by bugs.. but it has enough living bits to graft later! That tree, a little over 20 years ago, used to put out obnoxious amounts of fruit year after year. I got many many horses hooked on those juicy sweet pears. They are not overly large, and do have very tiny stones in the flesh, but you bite in and you'd better have on a bib! 

 So meandering for several hours, we found a lot.. you would have thought we would have noticed even more...  Like that we spent most of that time surrounded by poison ivy/oak!!! 

 We made pretty quick time getting back to the car, faster time getting home.. and sonic booms were heard as we sprinted to the shower. We were immune to it before.. but that can change, and you really, really don't want to find out when that status changes!

 So far so good! *knocks on wood* Clothes were tossed in the wash immediately as we don't want to find out just yet our daughter's immunity to it.


 We also are mitigating the "loon factor" by not asking where the Maternal Unit would like things... but rather telling her where we already put them. I'm rather... irked.. at the moment. Seeing as how I was just told she rented out the fields... in particular the area I wanted to put in the vine crops (squash, melons, etc.) We already had to dig up the fruit trees we planted.... (so not joking).

 I may go to hell for this.. but...  she actually commented on my lack of emotion to her latest onslaught. My evil humor got the best of me.. and I told her it was because I found her  Lorazepam. I am totally kidding..... or am I?  

 

(I didn't..  but her reaction had my husband all out laughing... and he really needed that.)