Yesterday was a nice day with no rain predicted for a few more days so Susie decided this would be a good time to spray our fruit trees with Dormant oil. This is an ongoing effort to keep the worms and fungi out of the apples, pears, cherries, plums and peaches.
It is a hopeless task with the apples. We have battled apple worms for ten years without any success. The only thing that’s going to keep worms out of those Red Delicious and Granny Smith blossoms is for me to cut down the trees , a task that is on my list of things to do this summer.
I doubt that all you Johnny Appleseed fans have much to worry about, however. My list is very long, including such items as recoating the blacktop driveway, building Riley Marie a play house, spending three weeks in Loogootee organizing the great American Novel I’m going to write someday, enclosing the porch on the barn and waxing the car, the truck and Fionna.
If you’re just visiting, Fionna is not a girl who needs a wax job, she’s our Holiday Rambler fifth wheel that we make our home in for several months of the year.
We also started what I hope is a new tradition this year, digging fishing worms. Riley Marie had the idea to gather up some worms for a spring break trip in case we go fishing. She soon discovered that my vegetable garden was the mother lode for worms.
Grandpa, would you come help me??
I suppose I’ll be helping her until she’s doubled in size. The dirt was nice and loose but her forty two pounds wouldn’t get that pitchfork in the ground. We didn’t have to dig far at all before we were pulling them out like radishes.
Oh Grandma, come see what I've got.
Riley, at age seven, is doing something that Susie, some sixty years older, wouldn’t do if you paid her a hundred dollars and that is holding a fishing worm. Susie avoids worms like the plague and it didn’t take long for her granddaughter to find that out.
Another game to play.
Wow does that bring back memories. When I was a kid, my dad and brothers and I all went “nightcrawer hunting” regularly. We even had a big red wooden box in the garage where we kept them, so that when the fish beckoned, we were good to go. For as squeemish as I am about every other critter, I’ve for some reason always loved hunting nightcrawalers. Go figure.
You know, Joan, I’ve always wanted to start an earthworm business but what with one thing and another, I’ve never gotten around to it.
Would you be interested in a Chicagoland franchise??