Judith Browning

Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved
when we place profound trust in the act of beginning.
Risk might be our greatest ally.
To live a truly creative life,
we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are,
attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant
and where new beginning might be ripening.
There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable
to what is new and different.
I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth
that was not rewarded a thousand times over.

John O’Donohue on Beginnings
https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/12/30/john-odonohue-blessings-beginnings/?mc_cid=cae3de6127&mc_eid=a3782d59bf

Gratitude doesn't send you out shopping to find satisfaction;
it comes as a gift rather than a commodity,
subverting the foundation of the whole economy.
That's good medicine for land and people alike.

Robin Wall Kimmerer,
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge
and the Teachings of Plants.
Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013.

“Circumstances don’t make the man,
they only reveal him to himself.”

— Epictetus

thanks mk!

and John!
I've considered boron...will see if I can figure the bare minimum  amount to use under the peach trees.  

Broken symmetry is imperfection, but rich in creativity.
The universe is created out of broken symmetry.

Amit Ray
Meditation: Insights and Inspiration (2010)

That kind of deep attention that we pay as children is something that I cherish,
that I think we all can cherish and reclaim,
because attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder,
the doorway to reciprocity.

Robin Wall Kimmerer
Interview on On Being podcast (2022)

thank you Amy and Alder both!

Your ideas make me feel like I'm on the right track at least.

As much as we would love to have chickens again we hesitate because of dogs and raccoons and recent experiences.

I'll clear back even farther from the trunk though and see about getting some neem oil.  I've never used it.

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.

Howard Thurman
(1899 to 1981, philosopher, theologian,
educator, and civil rights leader)

thanks Martin!

I'll see what happens....there are just four and I have probably a few dozen whole ones spending the winter out doors.

I wonder if it was because I kept them in the door to the refrigerator and it was too warm?

I've just decided to keep propagating more trees when we have a good year like this past one and assume their life span is short.

As a possible preventative, I have, just this fall, cleared an area a foot or so from the trunk down to bare dirt and will try to keep it that way...the idea I read was if you could keep the larvae in the soil stirred up they wouldn't make it to the trunk? doubtful but not a lot of effort to do.