230

Happy 230th, everyone across the Pond!

Any special tree plans, anyone?

Resin

Why, thank you Resin! Tree plans? Just preventing local teenagers from blowing them up with fireworks! Oh, and potting up my newly germinated Kentucky coffee trees tomorrow.

Scott

Thanks, Resin! Nothing special here, but I did provide all of my young trees with a big birthday drink. It has been very dry here and the near-term outlook is for more of the same. The one large Elm on my place looks like it's succumbing to DED. Maybe next year I'll plant a Liberty Elm to celebrate the 4th.

Bob

Hi Res -- for me, it's just another day of schlupping around enough water to try to keep the new things alive in our recurring drought, plus trapping Japanese beetles (2 gallons of them today) and watching weather forecasts which never trun out to be true. I hate summer.

Guy S.

Planted 14 Fr. Fiala crabapple clones, several dozen-odd viburnums, and two slips of willow from my mom's mom's place.

And it finally rained this afternoon.

Happy birthday to US!

What happens across the pond on your Country's celebration and when?
(Fireworks, Fest's, all that good stuff I presume?)

Dax

More importantly Resin, do you guys celebrate not having us as part of your kingdom? Is it known as good riddance day there?

Bill

I will say this - I somehow managed upon some huge celebration in towns in Holland one year - I think it was summer - Everyone was in any costume and carried some type of musical instrument. I was hitchhiking on I think the Audobon (in Holland too?) - and Police Officers picked me up and dropped me off during this celebration. The day before I was in some tiny village on the far eastern edge of Holland and this village had a circus tent set up for dancing - everyone held arms and made a big circle that kept moving while everybody drank and danced - and they hung some bag up or something from a tall pole and drove through on horses wacking at it!

Crazy (but fun)...

That was some 12 years ago. I was in college. But I especially liked eating waffles from vendors in Belgium and drinking beer with a gang of people in some tavern where a glass cowboy boot was filled with bear and if the person after you finished it, you had to fill the boot - DRINK THE WHOLE THING - and start all over again... Oh man. I can still do it though and with precision and I've never stolen a street sign.

Dax

Dax, those alien people over there have such alien customs. Pehaps we can send some scientists over to see what it all meant? he he (I'm joking of course!)

Hope y'all had fun!

Just an ordinary working day over here, tho' Washington Old Hall (George Washington's ancestors' home) just down the road from me always holds a US Independence Day event.

We don't really have any special national day, the closest equivalent is 5 November, to celebrate the failure of an early Irish nationalist (Guy Fawkes) who tried to blow up the UK Parliament but got caught before he could detonate the gunpowder. In common with UK tradition, I know the date, but not the year, of the event - have to look it up - ah, 1605. Otherwise, 31 December is the other fireworks event.

Trees - me, delighted that I've just had some Cupressus atlantica seedlings germinate, from the seeds I collected in Morocco.

Resin

My DH somehow spend the entire day preparing to dig a hole for a new specimen 'Vanderwolf Pine,' then digging the hole, then looking at the now-filled hole! :) We got the beautiful 6 foot tree at a nursery that had everything at 1/2 off, so we thought we got a good deal. Does anyone know about that particular pine? We placed "acid loving plants" soil amendent in the hole and around the tree. (Oh...the sci. name is 'Pinus flexilis 'Vanderwolf's Pyramid.')