u/violet_ativan

I picked up Samantha Hunt’s “The Seas” after seeing it posted here and was bowled over by the writing. Mr. Splitfoot was available on Libby so I went for it despite not seeing much chatter online about it.

It was a perfect book to read going into autumn and darkness, a modern gothic tale with faint Geek Love undertones at times. Samantha Hunt’s writing feels so special!

edit: the book is about a pregnant 20 something who travels on foot across the state of New York with her mute aunt toward an unknown destination. Two timelines (and 2 narrators If you’re listening to the audio book). Seances, cults, oh my

I bought this beautiful contender peach tree from a box store and planted it in 2020. That year I got about 9 peaches. Next year 25 or so. Then in year 3 so many that I thinned about 50 or so it wasn't overloaded. Then in 2023 I was back to about 9 and it hasn't blossomed since.

The last three years it's been suffering leaf curl to varying degrees, even though I sprayed it with copper sulfate. I confess I forgot to spray this year, and the leaf curl was pretty bad.

Ultimately, it looked awful this year. The tree was about 15 ft tall, but was only leafing on the ends of the high branches and I noticed that a lot of lateral branches had dead buds on it

Which brings me to now. I was in the yard drinking coffee with a farmer buddy of mine and he basically said "fortune favors the bold", and we went at it with a saw. The pictures show the results. I put down a big dose of Dr. Earth's fruit tree fertilizer and gave it a deep watering. Now I'm having second thoughts! Did I just murder my peach tree?

Just to give you an idea of the environment, you can see some other fruit trees in my yard - another peach tree, a cherry tree and two plums. The peach gets full sun all day. I'm in zone 4d (South Dakota).