Today's Activities

So it's just been an idle Tuesday. I put in for a few jobs this morning without much hope. My expectations have been dropping steadily lower with each week, but I have to keep on trying. It took much longer the last time, I suppose I was just hoping that things had improved. If anything, though, the economy now is worse than it was then.

I trimmed back the trees today, the rose bushes and Crepe Myrtle in front of the house. I still need to tie up one of the roses, it's leaning much too far outward. I cut the smaller new growth of the fig tree, but I really need a saw to cut back some of the thicker outgrowths. That is one of the most difficult trees to keep under control. It grows at a phenomenal rate every year! I'm fairly sure it would have taken over the entire side of the house if I didn't try to beat it back every other year. It was the first year I'd worked on the apple tree. I'm still a little leery about cutting into it, but i want to try and control the height of the tree as much as I can. I also removed a lot of the smaller offshoot branches to increase fruit size, even though it will mean fewer apples this year. I still need to transplant the baby Maple trees from the front garden, but first I have to decide the best placement for them. One of them may become difficult to move if I wait too much longer, it's now roughly 3 or 4 years old.

I also checked the does bred last week. It looks as though none of them took. However, I'm holding off re-breeding two of them, because of their reaction to the buck. I'll give them a few more days to a week and check them again. I did swap their cages though to see if I can push them into a cycle. I held off breeding the Angoras again because I think it would be better to try and sell them at the next show. Two of the does were interested in the bucks, so hopefully they are ready for litters and I can look for some little ones from them a month from today. The following does were bred (or re-bred):

Marco Polo to Momo (she did breed with him) (MR, re-bred)
Aruba to Momo (MR, re-bred)
Rena to Dynomite (a Holland breeding, re-bred)
Jewel to Phoenix (she bred with him) (HV, re-bred)
Eternity to Evan (MR)