Now the Reliance Peach in my unheated greenhouse is in full bloom. Bright pink petals open wide and being visited by native bees and flies. I have done some paintbrush cross pollination just to be sure I get a lot of fruit to set. No frosty or freezing weather expected in the near future. Next will be a spray of kaolin clay for the bugs and sulfur for the rots and cankers that inevitably await if I do not spray. This will be applied at petal fall and repeated two weeks later. All this because I have learned from last season watching 50 little peachlets whittled off by plum curculio damage until I had only 3 peaches ripen successfully. Hoping for better results this year. Would like to can some homegrown peaches this summer and maybe bake a cobbler or two. You have to have high hopes to grow peaches in northern Vermont, I sure do.

Wow! It's May 13th and the trees are really starting to wake up. Just noticed that my Siberian Pears are at the bud stage known as pink tip (meaning that they are very close to blooming). The pie cherries and plums are getting pretty close as well. Apples are still at green tip to tight cluster (meaning that we still have a week or two to go before they bloom). Things seemed so slow for so long this spring that I never thought it would come. The trees march forward in their progress into the season. Better get the sprayer ready! Things start to happen really fast this time of year.