Patio, Garden and Home Info

Pruning fruit trees is important, because it lets the sun reach all parts of the tree. That means the tree will live longer and the fruits will be better. Swearing that I wouldn’t call someone to do the job for me, I armed myself with my best sewing scissors and a ladder. I succeeded in opening the ladder and pinching my thumb in about 30 minutes. Then I climbed up this thing and had an idea of what Jack felt like when he climbed the beanstalk.

When I reached the first limb, I realized I knew nothing about pruning fruit trees but I figured it couldn’t be that hard. After attempting to cut one of the smaller limbs from my tree, it dawned upon me that scissors weren’t going to get the job done. So I borrowed my husband’s chain saw.

It had to be better than my scissors, right? The problem was, I didn’t know it would be so loud and it startled me. I threw it on the ground and toppled backwards off the ladder. Luckily, we have soft grass. I went back up the ladder with the chain saw (not before cursing the noisy thing) and started again. I was ready this time.

Once again, I tried cutting that smaller limb. Did you know that chain saws are very sharp? The chain saw was aggressive and chomped into six and half limbs. My beautiful tree! About 1/4th of it was lying on the ground, and boy, was I really ticked off. Never mind the fact that I now had a big scratch on my forehead after one of the falling limbs struck me there. But I wasn’t about to give up.

Grabbing the hedge shears, I started climbing the tree itself. After all, how hard can pruning fruit trees be? As I was going up, I kicked over the ladder by accident.

Boiling mad, I waited in that bleeping fruit tree until my husband found me in the tree, bleeding from the head, with dirt stuck to my butt. As my husband was laughing and I was walking back to the house, I gave that tree a look that would wither it and muttered, “Until Next Year!”