Thief!

I am sooooo mad! Squirrel thieves are taking all my Asian Pears! After frisky's comment on my last post about the tree I counted how many pieces of fruit we actually had and it was something like a couple of dozen. About a week ago I noticed that several leaves were lying around on the ground around the tree and found a half-eaten pear still attached to the branch. So annoying, but it was just one pear--at least I think so. At the time I didn't notice any other ones missing, but maybe I didn't look closely enough.

I decided to just watch and see what would happen since I wasn't sure what ate the pear so I wasn't sure how to prevent it. Then on Sunday, as we were running out the door, I noticed more leaves on the ground so I went closer to inspect. I had used red ribbon to tie up some of the branches to help support the weight of the fruit and I realized that one of the ribbons was looking really slack--because there was no fruit left on it!!! Something had plucked all the fruit clean off the branch! So then I counted how many pears I had left--eight. Eight out of twenty-four!

I talked to my neighbors today and they told me they saw a squirrel run off with a whole pear in it's mouth the other day so now I know what the little thief is. Last night I tied plastic bags around the remaining bunches of fruit to ward off the predators, until I could figure out a better solution. My mom told me to build a giant cage around the whole tree, but that'll look so ugly in the middle of my yard. So after some Internet research it looks like I'll have to get some sheet metal to wrap around the trunk so the squirrels can't climb up. That's tomorrow's project I guess. Oh, and in the meantime I lost another one sometime this afternoon/early evening so now we only have seven pears left :(

Here's a pic I took today so you could see how big the pears are now:

Some actual fruit of our labor

I haven't done a pear tree update in a while and I could use a post talking about something we're doing successfully :P The fruit has been getting bigger and bigger, and is probably about 2" across now. I've had to tie up some of the more heavily laden branches, and discovered today that one of them had actually already snapped from the weight of all the fruit. I pruned some of the fruit early on, but they're just growing faster than the branches.

Anyway, as I was tying up one of the branches today I knocked off one of the pears. It seemed solid enough to try a taste, and I was happy to find that it was pretty decent! Not tart at all, though not totally sweet yet either. Willy really liked it too. I didn't take a pic of it before I peeled it, but here are the remains :)

Pretty flowers from our yard

I love cut flowers but never buy them because I'm way too frugal. I love my orchids and other plants, but there's something about flowers in a vase that's just different. Luckily we have a few pretty perennials planted (say that 3x fast) around the yard and here's what I cut today:

The daisies are just too cute, and the other two are varieties of astilbes. I can't take credit for having planted any of these, they were already here when we bought the place. I did buy and plant more astilbe bulbs earlier this spring though since I love their delicate, pretty look and they're coming up slowly but surely.

Don't the astilbe's remind you of fireworks? Speaking of which, we saw the most amazing fireworks show for the 4th of July this year. We went to the Cambridge side of the Charles River with my sister and her boyfriend and the vendors for the show this year did an absolutely amazing job. I wish I'd taken my camera with me; the picture to the right is stolen from the Internet. Boston seriously has the best fireworks display anywhere, IMHO. We would have liked to be on the Esplanade for the show and be able to hear the Boston Pops play but it's not as easy to get on there as when I was a kid growing up here. There's barracades and National Guard and a bazillion people now so I think you have to go pretty early in the morning to secure a spot in front of the hatch shell.

Wanna See a Tree Update?

Here's the Asian Pear tree as of a couple of days ago:

It's definitely thriving and there are lots of little pear fruits all over it. They're still small, maybe a 1/2" in diameter or a little less. But they're definitely little pears! Who knows if they'll get to be eating size, but it's still fun to see :)

We have at least semi-green thumbs

I can finally put some weight on my ankle today and took a quick walk around part of our yard to check on the plants. Everything is at least peeking out of the ground and we've got a lot of flowering and budding on the plants. Take a look at all the new leaves on the Asian Pear tree! Yes, I am ridiculously excited about this. I always half expect to kill any plants that come home with me, so if they thrive I'm often really surprised and happy.

The relocated dogwood tree seems to be doing well too, with a bunch of new leaves/buds of its own. Let's hope this keeps up. It'd be nice to show Willy's mom (the lady with the Master's degree in horticulture!) that we can grow some stuff!

And here are some shots of random other things growing around our house, indoors and outdoors. Note that the white orchid grows like it's on steroids. It was a housewarming gift from my cousin a couple of years ago and started out with just one flowering branch and is now up to three flowering branches with a total of about 15-16 open flowers right now. I swear it's not anything special I'm doing but, hey, I'll show it off happily (though I'm not a very good photographer so the pics don't really do it justice). And the seedlings in the terra cotta pot are the start of three little Thai pepper plants. Guess who those are for?

What color are our thumbs?

This is the question of the season. We decided to try our hand at planting some things this spring, mostly inspired by an Asian Pear tree we bought on a whim last weekend. We were out for a motorcycle ride on this great local stretch of road we found and decided to stop in this cute little nursery along the way. The staff told us that pears are great fruit trees to try; the words "more or less indestructible" were thrown out there, which is perfect for us.

So Friday night we got to work putting this guy in his permanent home. The spot we originally chose for him on one side of the house wasn't going to work since I realized it doesn't get more than a few hours of sun each day. And we didn't really want the fruit tree in the front yard, so we opted to move our existing dogwood tree from its current location and replace it with the Asian Pear tree. The dogwood had a bad winter the first year we were here and Willy's mom lopped off a bunch of the dead branches so it was looking a little sad to be in such a prime spot in the yard. So, we put the Asian Pear tree in that sun-soaked spot. Isn't it purty? Even if we don't get fruit eventually (it's possible we'll get them next year), it's still got pretty flowers.

We're still hoping that the dogwood recovers too, but it will take him a while to fill out again I think. He bloomed last year and he's started blooming this year too, so we'll see. Hopefully he doesn't throw a tantrum for losing his previous spot. He's still got a nice area by the side of the house now. Oh, and we learned that we have A LOT of rocks right under the surface of our soil. That made for some fun digging. I planted some astilbe bulbs earlier in the week too so hopefully I'll be showing off some green thumb pics later in the season and not bare, brown patches.