Of Wind, and Trees, and Happy Thoughts

It is incredibly windy today. I am sitting here at my desk and watching a huge old dead elm swaying in the wind. It does not often move, but today it is making up for it's normal sluggishness. Today might be the day it comes down.

I have already started planting my wind break. Small trees, of course. Lowes has been offering promotional blue spruces for the last few years and I have tried to pick up some each year. The first ones I planted are now two foot tall. Mac mocks my tree planting endeavors. He would prefer to wait until we can afford more established trees, around six to eight foot tall. The cost would be prohibitive, especially when figuring for a quarter of a mile long wind break. So, I keep at it, sometimes buying as few as four trees at $4.99 a piece. Then I cross my fingers and hope that the promotional price will hold for another spring, because you never know, next year........

There won't be just green windbreaks but also fence rows. The idea has been haunting me for quite awhile so I will give it a go. I have read the instructions numerous times and have decided it is time to start. As per instruction, I have gone out and collected a bucket of hedge balls from my hedge (Osage Orange) trees. They will sit out in the elements, in the bucket, for the winter. According to the instructions this will cause them to break down into a slurry by next spring. Then I just need to dig a shallow planting furrow and sparingly pour the slurry into the furrow. The instructions specify that after a year the young flexible trees are to be bent into wickets, but I am thinking of trying another method. I would like to space the trees more. Top them off and espalier the laterals to grow like fence rails. I think that will allow me to get in and maintain the fence more easily. If worse comes to worse, I will be growing a great deal of firewood.

We tried growing pines for christmas trees, but the deer thought we were growing munchies for them. Now that we know the deer will pretty much leave spruces alone, we are entertaining the idea again. Spruces certainly don't take the pruning that pines do, though they grow slower. Not that I am in a hurry.

It is amazing me how the wind is blowing this morning. Amazing to watch that old dead elm. Not a fit day to be outside working on projects. I suppose I will just stay here, for awhile anyway, and think. There's just so much a person can think about, especially on a windy day like today.

Louie