A few months back I started to make rock-elm cuttings and for a spell
there, was having signs
of success. Come to find out that the stem had enough energy to burst
out a bud, a latent bud, but
the buds never leafed fully and when I inspected for roots there were
no roots. So enough latent
energy in the stem for a bud but no new roots.

I also cut branches from my favorite sour cherry tree and decided to
stick them into potting soil
without any hormone acid treatment. To my surprise several of them are
now budding out with
leaves. The buds look so good that I am confident they have roots
also.

I am at the stage in my landscaping of these grounds where I am
multiplying the growth of
trees and hedges that I favor as per fruit production. I am kind of
sad that 7 years ago I planted
"wild plum" for 6 rows and only 5 plum trees of a proven cultivar. I
am not going to get one single
good eating plum from the wild plums. But my Waneta plum tree is now
producing 5 good plums
for eating per day.

So my chore now is to slowly make cuttings of the fruit trees that are
doing well and replace the
ones that are nonproductive.

The same goes for my grapevines. I have three rows of 4 vines per row.
One of them is very sweet
and large and without seeds. So I am going to try to make cuttings of
them and replace or make
new rows of that particular cultivar.

I suppose this is what goes on in every successful orchard is the
continual replacement and upgrade
from nonproductive to that of good tasting productive. But I do not
know if I am going to have
the time to see it as a mature orchard. This is the sort of thing that
a young person and a family-on
the-farm sees through in generations of work. Where one generation
gets the thing up and going
and can see a future-perfect-orchard surrounded by productive woods.
And where the future family
generations fill in the gaps.

I would like to see rows and rows of productive shrubs, trees. All
pretty and all productive.

In my earlier years when I did alot more travelling around the world,
I often had flashbacks of my
life of where I was fulfilling that "perfect orchard". So when I was
hot and sweaty in the Caribbean
or tired and frustrated in Europe I thought of the time of building
that perfect orchard. So whether
I actually complete my "perfect orchard" does not really matter so
much as that I can complete
it in my "mind sake". That I lived a life rich enough to know what the
best life was. To have a home
where my time is all my time, sleep in or work all I want. To have
rows and rows of beautiful trees
and hedges. To grow my own food. To have clean air and clean water. To
have a good environment.
If I do not achieve the perfect orchard, I will have come close enough
to know what it is.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies