Jack’s Wednesday blog

I’ve always regarded gardening as a Calvinist punishment: namely, being rewarded for past or future sins.

Most of my life I lived in West Fife, an area of Scotland where you could dig up a lump of dirt from anywhere, shape it into something, leave it in the pale Scottish sun and whack it with a hammer the next day. It wouldn’t break. Solid clay, in fact. Weeds grew at amazing speeds, but nothing else would.

So, lots of backbreaking digging in the sure knowledge that it would result in nothing except more weeds means that I’ve never had much enthusiasm for gardening.

Fast forward to six plus years ago, when we moved in here at the bookstore and inherited an orchard out back: three apple trees, a peach tree and a pear tree. All heirlooms (which I’m told is ‘good’). We also inherited an enormous harvest of fruit. We still have some in the freezer.

But these trees GROW! And how!! In every direction!!!

Not being a confident gardener I’ve been nervous of pruning these trees. But last year we just couldn’t reach them all in the forest of branches, and the weight of the fruit was bending the side branches almost to the ground. And we couldn’t get in to cut the grass. The dogs loved it; who knows what unspeakable mischief they got up to in their secret playhouse?

So a few weeks ago, having finished the basement remodeling and looking around for something to do (HAH!) I decided to prune the apple trees.

I think it went well, don’t you?