When my partner and I moved from Minneapolis to Scandia three years ago, I felt like I finally had a canvas large enough to plant some fruit trees and small fruits. What started with a trip to a nursery auction rapidly bordered on compulsion of selecting and planting.

I’ve planted five kinds of apples, four kinds of cherries, five plums, five pears, and three peaches and three apricots (and we won’t mention the blueberries, strawberries, currants, red raspberries, gold raspberries, black raspberries and blackberries). Though I’d love to plant some cider apples, I’m pretty much out of room!

As these trees get established, I haven’t expected fruit. But this year, I’m seeing some very hopeful signs that point to some payoff for lots of digging, watering, mulching and protecting from rabbits and deer.

The trick in the next few years will for me will be to learn how to properly prune and handle pests in the most organic ways possible. And if I’m very lucky, to figure out what to do with the harvest. Anyone have a good recipe for cherry pie?

Recently, I got home from work and found four packages of plants waiting for me on my doorstep. Since I still maintain a childlike delight in getting mail, having four packages to unwrap (and knowing none of them was pajamas from Great Aunt Shirley) in one day was utter joy.

But even better was that every box held surprises. I purchased the contents of the boxes back in January, when ordering plants is a defiant act of faith that spring would, indeed, arrive. Now months later, I’d completely forgotten what I’d ordered.

I ripped open the cardboard containers and discovered….packing peanuts? That didn’t seem very green. At least it didn’t until I read that these were 30% recycled and I could send them back in the box they were shipped in, and get a credit from the nursery on my next order. I carefully shook the peanuts from each plant and tried to make sense of what had been sent to me.

There was the guacamole hosta and the plum pudding heuchere(coral bells) for the shade. There was sedum and several kinds of asters, which I sort of remembered ordering so the bees would have more late-season nectar sources. Then there was sweet woodruff, of which I had no memory of ordering at all (am I the only one who does this? Or am I just the only one who orders plants and then forgets about them until they arrive?)

Also included in the packages were cranberries (the real ones, not the viburnum kind called highbush cranberry) and a pecan that is supposed to be hardy in zone 4.

Now comes the digging/planting/fencing part. I don’t mind doing that, certainly, but it’s a little more like putting together all the toys you got and finding batteries after the big day.

Tired tomatoes, pooped peppers — Some of my coworkers have already put their gardens to bed. Though my garden is getting sleepy, I am not ready for the end of the growing season.

While I wait for my cool season crops, I decided to enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor. On a picture-prefect Sunday, my friends Lee and Geri, the BF and I drove to an orchard in Afton, Minnesota for an afternoon of apple picking, sampling and shenanigans. It was my first time at a commercial orchard and, to be honest, I made a complete dork out of myself.