Where is the leverage?

Spring is about to come crashing down on me.

I need to set priorities about what I do.  Questions to ask are:

• What will make the biggest difference five years from now?  Twenty-five years from now?
• What is truly the most time urgent?
• What impacts other people?
• What do I have energy for?

Collecting scionwood is both time urgent and will make a big difference five years from now, if I can follow through and get it grafted.   General pruning...not so much.

I am doing a few things for other people.  One of my friends is a businessman and he has a metric boatload of rebates that are on the verge of expiring.  He is going to keep doing his core business and I am going to get very good at filling out rebates.

Another acquaintance wants to plant a LARGE orchard and he is coming into it fairly cold.  I will be giving him an orchard tour so he can see how big a pear/quince tree gets, what an Asian pear tree looks like, what apple trees grafted on M-26 sized rootstock looks like.  He is making some fundamental decisions, like his row spacing, that will shape his business for a long, long time.  I am not selling him anything, just letting him look around.

One thing that needs to get wedged into the schedule is maintenance.  I get fat when I do not get enough exercise.  It looks like running five miles three or four times a week will meet that need.

One thing that is less urgent and will get shelved for a month or two is the second security camera 

Sometimes there are a million more urgent things to do but the only thing I have energy for is to walk around the property with a pair of handpruners stuffed in my back pocket.  And that is OK.  Something gets done and those walks are good planning time.