Spring is in the air

After an epic late-winter family illness that took over 2 months to completely go away and after an even more epic return-winter (is there a term for when spring comes very early and you get all your hopes up and all your seeds in the ground and then you get slammed with two extra weeks of deep freeze and 30 cm of snow?) spring is finally here.

Let's hope it's here to stay!

Spring bulb flowers we planted last fall in a new experimental bed are all coming up nicely if a bit sparse, as we wanted to allow space for underground propagation. The micro orchard is also coming to life with several trees blooming for the first time, like a few pears, the cherries and even an apple.

That last one cherry was chomped by neighbors' lambs to about 60 cm of height. TWICE! And still it lives and flowers! Trees are some mighty resilient creatures!

And would you look at that - flower buds on a second year cutting! Well, actually those cuttings were taken fall 2016 and put in the ground to root. Then last fall, 2017, I dug them out and planted them in their permanent location. And now they're getting ready to bloom!

Of course, we've set many dozens of new cuttings to root and now they are sprouting leaves.

Finally, here's a photo of our baby honeyberry bush (more commonly known here as "Kamchatkas") that was moved to another location in fall and massively cut back to encourage growth and now it's covered in flowers and even set some fruit. I've taken cuttings from that bush too, and I'm also trying to root a live branch by burying a part of it in the soil.