Some Numbers

Counting Fruit

This morning after my run I counted all of the individual pawpaw fruits that I could see on each of the three trees that are going to bear fruit this year: the Wells (five years since planting), the Shenandoah (four years since planting), and the KSU-Atwood (four years since planting).

I think that for the most part the trees have shed the fruit they won't support and so are now left with the fruit they're going to keep. Here are some numbers:

Wells: 13 fruit counted
Shenandoah: 42 fruit counted
KSU-Atwood: 28 fruit counted

I may have missed counting some of the fruit, since they're green and so are the leaves, but I think I'm in the ballpark.

Counting Seedlings

Yesterday I checked on the progress of the germinating pawpaw seeds. On Monday there were four seeds that had broken the soil. And by yesterday (June 9) there were four more: D5, D2, C1, and C2.

It's hard to see these germinating seeds, so I'll first show the pic with the ID number and then I'll show a close-up of the germination.

D5 container

D5 just barely breaking the soil

D2 container

D2, visible if you look at the right angle

C1 container

A poor pic of C1

C2 container

C2's efforts

And then you'll no doubt remember this picture of B1 from Monday. Things have changed in B1's circle; it's uncurled a bit and now is showing its anemic green leaf. I shouldn't call it anemic I guess, since that's such a hemoglobin-oriented (rather than chlorophyll-oriented) perspective.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

by: anonymous

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold 

Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I'm just kidding about that "anonymous" bit. The poem's by Robert Frost.