New plants!

When we moved into our house, I kept saying, "We'll finish the backyard some day and I'll plant my fruit trees then." This Spring, my next door neighbor put in a block wall and it added a finished element to that side of the yard. I got tired of waiting for the cash to "finish" my backyard. I saved up $80 and bought dirt, an apricot tree, a pomegranate bush and a grape vine. That was the easy part.

The hard part was digging the holes for said plants. Imagine my backyard as a huge boulder field. In between the boulders are smaller rocks, gravel and clay. The clay and gravel act as cement and holds all the rocks and boulders together. Yeah, good for house foundations, bad for digging holes with a shovel and pick ax.

But I was able to finish all the holes and only needed the Scout to pull out one of the boulders with a strap. (It was about 2 1/2 feet in diameter and about 1 foot tall.) Here's the apricot tree: (Notice all the small rocks in the background.) :)

Here's the grape vine. It's a red, seedless variety!

Here's the pomegranate with Juliet for scale.

The leftover boulder field that I'll move eventually.

The best part this adventure is that the apricot tree had blossoms on it when I purchased it from Star Nursery. It sat in the pot for about a week, waiting to be planted and meanwhile those blossoms turned into little apricots! I bet there's a dozen. I just hope the shock of transplanting doesn't make them fall off. I might eat an apricot this year! Yeah!