Today was to be mostly a prep day to get my van ready for a trip. So once I got it going I went through all the food and supplies in the van adding some and removing some stuff. I also started going through the clothes as I’ll be going to a wet area that may be a bit on the cool side too, so I need the right stuff.
Then I checked the engine’s fluids which where all up to par and loaded this and that of stuff I think I’ll need.
Graphing a cherry tree to a plum tree
I also wanted to graph some cherry wood to a plum tree before I leave and I noticed today the plum tree’s buds were starting to swell, so towards the end of the day I went to work graphing some Rainier cherry wood to a wild plum tree for the root stock.
Here’s the plum tree just to the left of the propane tank.
I need to cut most of the plum tree off to make places to put the cherry wood graphs, so I took most of this trunk down.
This is the plum tree trunk I have left to work with. I plan to graph in three places.
I used my machete and a hammer to put splits in the places I was going to add the graphing wood.
Then I forced a screw driver into the slots to open them up to receive the cherry wood graphs I had cut the ends to tappers to fit into the slots and tried the best I could to line up the cambium layers.
Here’s the cherry wood graphs in place. I did something different this time and used modeling clay to fill in the cracks which should help protect this part of the graph. I don’t really like the commercial graphing compound as it dries out and cracks a lot and then the graphs fail from drying out.
I then used black electrical tape to seal over the clay, like this.
I used the pliable electrical tape to seal over the big cuts and around the graphs as we don’t want this part to dry out, but instead grow together and form a new cherry tree.
I used duct tape to seal the lower parts where the cracks were that I filled with clay and the finished product looks like this.
If all goes well this spring and I did it right, the cherry wood should sprout and take off into a new cherry tree. If not, just a little time wasted as I didn’t like that plum type anyway.
Got all the brush stacked
I finished that and still had a little more time until it got dark so I stacked this brush on the habitat pile on the right.
Of course I had to bring all the brush from the plum tree I just cut off to the brush pile too.
I was able to throw all the brush up on top of the pile and now have a nice big habitat pile. Lots of my plum trees are blooming and if this last rain storm gets finished and we have some sunny weather like we are supposed to, some of those blossoms might get pollinated and Ill get some plums.
The daffodils are still looking good, but are starting to fade a bit as spring marches on.
Tomorrow I will finish prepping the van and it should be ready to roll either Sunday or Monday depending on the weather.
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.
