elainegrey

I'm not sure what to call this cross quarter "day", this time between solstice and equinox when the change of daylight will start accelerating day to day. It's important for me and my experience, but neither Brigid or Candlemas or Imbolc as names speak to me. To observe i pruned the orchard, and i will try to make it an annual observation. I got most of it done this morning.

I feel pretty good about the blueberries. Here's hoping for fewer hard freezes after warming this year. I am delighted that i seem to have started a fourth berry bush from a cutting, just by shoving it in the soil.

The apple trees... i dunno what i am doing. I read, i watch, and then i look at my trees and go -- but what about all this?  (Hands wave at all the whips shooting up into the sky.) I had not completed the pruning of one tree a couple years ago, and then last year i didn't get pruning done (maybe? can't recall). It had a nice tall standard trunk which is NOT the open vase goal. So, i lopped it. I hope the tree forgives me. It's the one that actually gave us an apple last year.

The persimmon also had whips leading off into the sky: they're all lopped away now.

I don't lay a finger on the paw-paws. They look lovely.  I do hope to have flowers on more than one tree this year. The grafted plant has bloomed a couple years in a row, and it's sent up shoot from its roots about a foot away from the trunk. I should probably cut it back, since it will be random genetics. Maybe i'll dig it out some time and start trees outside of the fence. The three seedlings from pawpaws from a local breeder are all looking promising for pollen this year. Similarly, the mulberries are on their own, looking quite nicely shaped. Not that i could do anything --  one is a good sized tree. I'd planted another very close as a pollinator: i'm not sure that was necessary now, but so it goes.

I think this will be the last year i do any pruning to the chestnuts. Both trees wanted to be vases, but in this case i wanted standards. So i've been trying to convince them to have a nice straight trunk: they finally look like trees and not flailing things. I took off some very low branches with the pruning saw, which were the last of the competing trunks. I wonder if our wood turner friend will want these three inch diameter limb sections.

And the fig. I realized if i took off one of the trunks that juts into the yard, i'll be able to put the ladder in the middle of the canopy and do a better harvesting job. I think i want to take off some of the higher whorls of branches -- where i had truncated a growing leader in a previous year and it sprouted out many branches. The jutting trunk, though, makes a big difference.

I also nipped off the very tip of the wild holly growing outside our bedroom window. It's got a lovely shape, but the trees can grow to be 60' tall: don't want that right there. I'll see if i can train it into something manageable. I've a wild spice bush near it that is lovely -- just keep it cut back from the path.  There's two hickory trunks that are now taller than i am. I'm watching them to cut back when they are the diameter of a good walking stick. There's a sassafras i planted near those, which also could become a large tree, except i suspect the shade of the mature tulip poplar will hold it back.

... in /Essential Asatru/, Diana Paxson goes for completeness, listing every single holiday she can find that’s celebrated by some heathen group or another. For the time between Yule and Easter, she lists Thorrablot (in late January), Charming of the Plow (Feb. 2), Disting (Feb. 2 or 14), .... Thorrablot is a holiday celebrated in Iceland in honor of “Old Man Winter”, but American groups that celebrate it do it in honor of Thor, probably just because of the similarity in the name. For Charming of the Plow she says, “Offerings are made to Mother Earth and the first furrow is cut. Feast of Barri, celebrating the marriage of Freyr and Gerd. Plant seeds indoors for later transplanting.” Disting is a time to honor the female ancestors if they aren’t honored at some other time in the year, .... -- https://heathennaturalist.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/looking-into-imbolc/