Fruit trees

Back when I lived in Sackville, N.B., we planted several apple trees in our back yard. (One of them was the Lodi variety, I recall.) One spring, my brother decided to prune these trees, but he did a terrible job, removing all their new growth.  One of the trees never quite recovered, and died a few years later.  One problem with pruning is that when you cut off the wrong thing, you can't go back and uncut it.

Since then I've learned to prune trees pretty well.  You want to remove the branches that are growing inward or downward, and leave alone the ones that are growing upward or outward.  Also, if two trees are close you should trim them so they won't get into each other's space.

We now live in a house on Greensides Avenue near St. Clair West.  It came with a big cherry tree and a big plum tree in the back yard.  There was also a crab apple tree in the front that was about my height when we bought the place, but in the twenty years since then it's grown really big.  Also, the cherry tree produced a couple of offshoots which I replanted in the front and side yards, and have also grown big.  The land had an orchard a century ago, and we're continuing the tradition.

One year--I think it was 2000--the cherry tree in back produced cherries literally by the bucketful.  But now it's getting old.  We recently took off a big dead limb and I don't know how long the rest will survive. (The plum tree is getting old too.) 

One thing I like is blossom season in the spring.  The cherry trees have nice white blossoms, while the crab apple blossoms are purplish.