Continued extremely warm. Many apples are open with some approaching full bloom. Others still at pink or even just beginning to leaf out. It’s spectacular out in the orchard, and there should be at least another week of this ahead of us.
Wednesday, May 20, you can see the spectacular bloom at the Maine Heritage Orchard at MOFGA. The timing should be perfect. There’s a bloom-tour from 5-7 PM. I’ll be giving a talk which (rumor has it) may focus on the magic of apples. Come join us if you can.
I returned to the governor’s Blaine House in Augusta to graft the last of the 16 apple trees in the Blaine House orchard. They now have an apple from each of Maine’s 16 counties. Governor Mills will leave office in January, and someone new will take her place. I sure hope they love apples.
Do you believe in Magic?
I followed the river down to Hallowell where I topworked the apple and pear we saved from the bulldozers a couple of months ago. Friends had alerted me of the impending demise of the trees and the Save-the-Maine-Trees-Rescue squad rushed over to assist them in collecting scionwood. We’ve grafted them at home and put them in our tree nursery, and today I grafted the pear and apple scions onto older trees in the Hallowell neighborhood. The old varieties will live on. The baton will be passed. As I inserted the scion into the rootstock sprout from the old tree, one of the neighbors declared, “It’s magic!”