Mrs ERJ and I got matching colds for Christmas

Footage taken from my Scanning Electron Microscope of a Rhinovirus attacking and entering a cell in my nasal membrane.  I had to hold VERY STILL during this filming.

Mrs ERJ and I are walking around with matching tissue boxes.  She is a couple of days ahead of me.  It felled her as she wrapped presents Christmas Eve.  Mine struck the day after Christmas.

A few outdoor pictures from the day after Christmas

We went from 6 inches of snow to green in twenty four hours.  An inch of fifty degree (F) rain will do that.

Kale

Turnip greens.  This plant showed up at the base of one of the posts that holds up our clothes line and I could not bring myself to kill it.

A little bit of pruning in the orchard.  This is a "before" shot.  The bag wrapped around the trunk is to minimize sunscald.

Branches on the ground.

After shots.  Bags of leaves are for mulch.  I will spread them in the spring after vole/mouse risk is reduced.

This is a good example of a two-scaffold tree.

I left a few extra twigs on them to serve as a source of scionwood in case I decide to propagate this variety.

Corwin Davis's advice was to open it up to where you could throw a bushel basket through the tree.

That makes more sense to me now that we are harvesting all of our apples.  You cannot pick the apples if you cannot fit your body...and a bushel basket...into the tree.

Most of my trees are pruned to a two-scaffold/central leader system.  The first flush of branches (i.e., the first scaffold) starts at my belt buckle.  The second scaffold is about four feet above that.  I had been leaving the bottom scaffold too dense and it was a bear to fit a step ladder in, close to the trunk, and be able to pick the apples in the higher scaffold.

We get old too soon and wise too late.