Brrrrr!

It got down to 33 degrees last night and supposed to be just as cold tonight.  Highs today in the lower 60’s.  I’ve been in denial, but I guess I have to finally admit that summer is really gone.  Not that I should be complaining; we had a doozy of a hot & dry summer this year.  We lost several of the blueberry bushes and four of the 20 fruit trees we planted earlier this spring.  Although two of them didn’t even break dormancy so I’m pretty sure that they were dead when we bought them.  We made a 4-hour round trip ride up to a place that had “special ordered” the dwarf fruit trees for us.  Well, stupid me didn’t check the tags on all of them & it turns out that half of them were still semi-dwarf or even full sized trees.  Needless to say, we’re not very happy; $100 worth of dead trees, wrong sized trees, and no refunds.  I can kind of understand about the refund stuff  because they don’t know what kind of care you’ve given the trees, but the two plums we got were definitely dead & not “dormant”.  Live & learn. 

I was at Lowe’s yesterday picking up some “fixing stuff” and went through the plant section to see what goodies they had on sale.  And lo & behold, their trees were at least 50% off!  So I wheel my buggy over to the picked-over tree section & find several plum and nectarine trees. 

So I got two nectarine trees for under $20!  Not bad, hugh?

I would have bought more, but we don’t have any holes dug yet other than the empty spaces left by the dead trees.  And around here unless there is a place ready to go for a plant, they end up sitting in their pots forever.  So unless I get really ambitions, or unless Paul puts the backhoe attachment on the tractor, two nectarines are all that are going in the ground this Fall.  The cheapskate urge in me may be too strong though – come on, fruit trees (with a guarantee!) for under $10 a piece!  How can I NOT go back and get more?