Apple Blossom

Just so beautiful & innocent, waiting for a little bee to come around, making little green apples, heh, heh!!!

LOL..ain't it the truth? Not sure if we will realize any food from these trees...I won't use sprays, but did a lot of cleaning up in the very early spring...all deadwood, all crossing branches...cleared out the middle...cleared all waterspouts...was surprised at the amount of blossom considering how much wood I took off...will be a wonder to see just how many "little green apples" I get! (that is, once the bugs have taken their cut!)

O you will Lori, just a few to eat will be fine. we did the same, really pruned the heck out of ours. Discovered tent caterpillars in it, so took it off & burned them. The Mason bees were very busy pollinating this year, last year a cold spell made pollinating to late.
We also have to fight the raccoons for our apples & grapes. TG they have no appetite foe Quince yet.

Guess that's the next plague...tent catterpillers! I have seen one (they have blue on their backs, right?) and I squished it..but didn't see any more...but if you see one...there are ten you don't see? There don't seem to be too many skunks, raccoons or porcupines around here. thankful for that...but it may be because we have foxes. Neighbour has chickens...said he lost a number of them and the rooster to foxes last winter...I found the feathers of a wild turkey as well...so the local foxes lived very well last winter. at least the foxes don't eat the apples!

Heh, heh!!yes we still live with nature in this beautiful country of ours, Lori. Foxes, wow!!haven't seen those for years. When we had a home on the Shuswap Lake Coyotes would send chills up our spines at night. And in Kemano (way up North) BC we would see the wolves no & then, looking for a cat to chomp on or a female dog to steal away from their owners.

I think wild Turkeys in the olden days must have been tougher than their cousins we now enjoy at Xmas & TG.

have to agree with you about the turkeys, Adoons. We were returning from town one day and our attention was taken by the return of neighbours from the south. when we looked back (this was a fraction of a second, actually) ...we had a wild turkey flying just above the hood of the car...Terry slowed and it glided down into the neighbour's driveway! Never saw them fly before! but that was almost an ex-bird! Now I know why they call not-too-smart-people "turkeys"...lol. My aunt (in-law) lives on Shuswap Lake...they have a lovely large house overlooking the lake and the mountains beyond...they have had a blackbear in their backyard! and my niece in Muskoka just had an experience with a momma blackbear and her two cubs!

Yikes, black bears scare me, know the difference between Black bear & grizzly???? you find the whistle at the bottom of the tree if it was a black bear chasing you, but in a grizz you find the whisle in the scat ( get it??? after he consumed U & whistle....Lol!!)
We loved the Shuswap, but we got Albertas (big oil money) all around us & boats, sea doos etc all over, could not swim savely etc any more. So rude. Leave their garbage on our beach etc. not all, but they had no boat sense. drinking etc. We had 3 acres on the water & the kids just took their dirt bikes right through the back of our property, did not care. The other side the neighbour decided we had so much land, he will infringe building a garage on our land. That was it, sold out to Albertans & moved, yeah!!!!!
So we move to the ocean where if you are stupid, U die. Can swim & kayak now in peace.

Yup, turkeys fly, as the roast at night in trees, but I do not think 4 long distances. An ex bird given to the neighbour, heh, heh!!!

I remember hearing an interview with a woman who survived a grizzly mauling. How terrifying.
Met still another neighbour and he proceeded to tell us how the black bears started coming into his yard (and ours too) after the municipality closed a dumpsite about five miles from us. Now I'm worried about letting Mandy out for a pee in the middle of the night. Skunks and raccoons are one thing...bears are dangerous. My niece said that hikers are warned to wear bells on their boots when hiking out in BC. (She was raised on Vancouver Island). Think that would be pretty annoying to the hiker and the bear!

Heh, heh, on their boots, and whistle around your neck.
We just had a case last night, close to Shuswap where the dog treed a bear cub, and the owner tried to get the dog away (silly man, as Momma is always close by) and the mamma bear attacked him from behind. He will live, but very scared & ripped up. So be careful please.

We use to whistle, yell ring our bells, just to warn them we are coming. Never liked the hiking in the dense bush, always nervous, cause I know I will run!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh my...show them your back and you are in real trouble. the mother bear in my niece's experience was very large for a black bear. When she stood up on her hind legs she could look right into the cab of my niece's SUV. on eye level. (That's pretty tall for a blackbear...and she was spoiling for a confrontation.) My niece was smart enough to avoid eye contact while she tried to get her dogs to shut-up! When the bear realized that she wasn't going to do anything in response to her aggression she called the cubs and vamoosed. I think the urge to run is in our DNA! Who in their right mind would stick around to be mauled?...but the bears are faster on their four legs than we are on two! Set ...point..and match to the bear! remember the woman who was interviewed saying that she could smell the breath of the bear while playing dead..it sniffed her and tried to bite her head! Gaawwwd...how could she do that?

survival, that is how. Better than me 4 sure. On our little island we are blessed.................no bears, no cougars, nice to walk in the forest without heart pounding.

Now that the bugs have eased a little I plan to take a trip to the top...I've removed a lot of deadwood so the undergrowth is the next clearing project...going to take a whistle with me...and leave Mandy at home!!