I need to get some stuff done before spring arrives, so I stayed home for a change and did some much needed pruning on mostly some old apple trees in my orchard.
These trees have been neglected by me for several years and needed some attention. To make a tree healthy, they need to be pruned to make them grow, which causes them to heal up bad stuff on them.
I got my ladder out and the chain saw and some other pruning tools and got started
Learning how to start the chain saw
I tried to get my brothers little chain saw started, but I couldn’t get it going, so when it was time for a break, I found the owner’s manual online and read up on how this one works, then went back outside and did what it said and it started up. so at least now I could cut the bigger stuff with it which speeded up the process a lot.
Cutting all this old wood off makes a big mess.
Here, I’m almost finished with these two apple trees. these two are some I planted about thirty years ago and grafted several types of known good apples on them.
Kumquat tree is steeling the sun
I had also planned to remove that high branch on the Kumquat tree as it was steeling the sun from my blueberry patch which is in back of it.
So now that I had the saw going I cut that one high branch off it and cut it up.
And the olive tree needed some cutting too
There was also an olive tree steeling the sun, so I cut some of it off too. You can see my blueberry patch in the back.
Only had so much gas
I got the olive tree down to here but didn’t finish it off as I only have so much gas for this saw as my brother wants me to use his gas to be sure I don’t mess up the saw with any bad gas so I had to conserve as I couldn’t find his gas and he’s not around right now.
Enough for the day
I worked on another apple tree that was growing to the sky with my hand loppers and that pretty much tuckered me out for the day which was ok as it was cooling down and would get dark soon anyway.
Once I shut the saw off for the day, the cat came by to checkout what I had done.
Picking up the brush can wait
I didn’t pick up any of the brush yet as I don’t have that much energy, so it can wait until I get to it. The important thing is to get the stuff cut so spring doesn’t sneak up on me before I get it done.
My spring indicators
Here’s a picture of some of the daffodils in the yard. See those big swollen buds, they are ready to pop which is one of the things I watch to tell me spring is here.
Making buckwheat noodles from scratch
By this time I was beat so I went in the house for a nap, but before I did that I made up some dough for a batch of buckwheat noodles. I’ve never made any out of buckwheat before, but I have made a lot of wheat type noodles from scratch.
So far the buckwheat noodle dough seem a lot different than the wheat noodle dough as the buckwheat doesn’t have much gluten in it, so this will be an experience. I’m letting the dough sit for some time before I try to roll it out and cut it into noodles, which I will do after I finish writing this blog.
I think I will do a little research on the internet to check out some buckwheat noodle dough recipes to see what is recommended as I can still add some stuff to it, but I’m trying to keep it mostly buckwheat to keep it corn free.
And that was my day for a good one as I got some much needed stuff done, so I’ll be able to go off and play some more.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
