Good Things List No.71: Fertilizing Fruit Trees, Vintage Style New Dishes, 6 Book Reviews & More

A monthly list of good things to see, buy, read and watch.

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In typical spring fashion we’ve already had sunny days with highs of 70 with the next day topping out at 49 with wind and rain. I wonder what April holds?

It’s all exciting, though, isn’t it? Those first warmish sunny days were just a taste of what’s to come. The daffodils are blooming outside our window along with the cherry trees blossoms everywhere we drive. I love it!

I have already planted out the spinach from the milk jugs as well as the first lettuce, and onions I had started inside, so it’s definitely feeling like spring to me.

I hope your gardens are coming to life, too, and you’re enjoying any crazy weather that comes our way in this transitional month.

I’m so excited to share the good things this month with you – especially the beauty that happens sometimes with weather swings, fruit trees blooming, and the THREE books that will probably be on my best of 2024 list!

Good Things List

Amazing Rainbow

I took this picture of a full rainbow from our porch with the panoramic setting on my phone – isn’t it incredible?? It was actually closer to me than the pano photo allows and the main rainbow was so bright!

I never used to see full rainbows including both ends until moving to the farmhouse – we call this “rainbow valley” because whenever we have rain and sun we’ll often get full rainbows.

It never gets old.

How to Get Your Fruit Trees To Bloom

I’m almost giddy with excitement about the blooms covering this plum tree!! This tree was the first fruit tree we planted and it’s five years old this spring and this is the FIRST time it’s ever bloomed – even one bloom.

I shared my disappointment to my newsletter subscribers and many wrote back and said that I should fertilize them.

Now this may seem like a “why didn’t she think of that?” scenario, but I’ve grown trees in two other houses in Oregon and they just bloomed and produced with nothing more than an annual topping of compost. They do grow wild here in the Willamette Valley, so I never really thought about it.

Anyway, I used a liquid fertilizer on them last spring and then slow release stake fertilizers in the fall and voila! We have a plum covered with blossoms.

Now will we get any fruit from them? Stay tuned!

Our much younger peach tree has also bloomed with many more than the two blossoms it had last year, so the fertilizing has really made a difference.

We do have 3 apple trees, one of which is 4 years old, but apples bloom after leafing out, so I don’t know yet if they will have blossoms, too. I’m sure hoping so!

Here is what I used:

• Dr. Jimz Tree Secret Liquid Plant Fertilizer. My sister told me about this fertilizer and what a difference it made to the growth and bloom on both trees and shrubs she used it on.
• Jobe’s Fertilizer Spikes, Fruit and Citrus. I wanted a slow-release option for the fall and this is what I could find. I’d love to find something similar that’s organic – if you know of one, leave a comment!

Vintage Style New Plates and Bowls

After more than a year of looking at these gorgeous green vintage looking dishes I finally ordered a set of the bowls, dessert plates, and bread plates. And they are just as perfect as I had hoped.

This pattern also comes in blue, but blue dishes, both old and new are easy to find anywhere, but green? Not so much, which is why I splurged on this pattern.

They look wonderful with my (actual) vintage creamy Pope Grosser Rose Point dinner plates and I think food looks better on them than the red transferware I had been using. Plus, their vintagey vibe just makes me happy.

See the green floral stoneware dishes at Zara Home here (also in blue).

March Reads

Neanderthal Seeks Human, Penny Reid. This is the first book in Reid’s Knitting in the City series and she calls it a “smart romance.” I appreciated the characters depth, the lighter moments and the closed door romance. The heroine’s insecurities and “verbal diarrhea” were so out there, though, that it bordered on unbelievable. But I did relate to her not thinking the cute guy would like her because that’s how I felt when my husband and I were first dating, lol. In all it was a fun diversion type of book, but I won’t bother with any of the others in the series. (I did try another book of this author’s that I had to quit because it was super open door right away, so maybe it’s just this book, her debut, that’s closed?).

Tom Lake, Anne Patchett (narr: Meryl Streep). It’s important to mention that this is narrated by Meryl Streep because I think it’s one of the reasons this will be on my best-of list for 2024. You probably aren’t surprised to hear that she’s SO good – I really feel like I’m simply listening to the mother in the story tell her daughters about her life LIKE I’M RIGHT THERE, instead of someone reading an audiobook. The story did hold my interest, but it was a quiet, sometimes pretty slow story, which held enough revelations to make me want to keep reading. If you’re interested, definitely do the audiobook!!

The Boys in The Boat, Daniel James Brown. Wow, wow – Brian and I listened to this book together and we were gobsmacked (I’ve always wanted to use that word and it finally really fits!). Like, if this were just a story someone had made up we would’ve rolled our eyes at each other numerous times at how seemingly unbelievable things were. But it’s REAL. It didn’t matter that we’d seen the movie (which I still like, even though they had to leave a lot out), this author did an amazing job at bringing the excitement of the races to the book. Definitely on my top 10 list for 2024 for sure!

The Other Bennet Sister, Janice Hadlow. This book featuring Mary from Pride and Prejudice had been on my radar since it came out in 2020, but I had read quite a few Austen retellings that weren’t that great, so I didn’t prioritize this book. Then a blogger I follow raved about it and I quickly grabbed it from the library. And this is a good one! The first third of the book takes place before the happenings in Pride and Prejudice and the second third during. To be honest, these were hard chapters to get though with Mary because she wasn’t treated well, especially by her father (Lizzy and Jane were kind, though). I much preferred the last third of the book when she comes into her own and is out under the shadow of her family. We see and understand why she acted as she did and we witness her growth and maturity. And then she gets her own happy ending, too. A record third book in one month that you’ll probably see on my year end best books list!

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabriel Zevin. I went back and forth on this book when I first started seeing it on all the social media accounts I follow when it came out in 2022. I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy the gaming aspect of it, since I have never really played video games (unless you count the preloaded Bugdom game on 1990s macs, ha!). But I read another good review and placed a hold on it at the library, which I got after a 3-month wait. Annnd…it was just okay. There was a lot about games and gaming which did go over my head. But I did enjoy the story of the two main characters and how they met as children and continued their friendship/partnership in spurts through the years. Much of it I didn’t buy into, especially the years-long estrangement because the heroine blamed the hero for her own poor choices in not leaving an abusive lover. The twist towards the end was kind of out of left field for me and seemed to be just to create a bunch of conflict and grief and the ending was just so-so, but overall I did enjoy the story.

A Newlyweds Guide to Fortune and Murder, Diane Freeman. This is the 6th installment in the Countess of Harleigh light mystery series which I like to listen to since it is narrated by one of my favorites, Sarah Zimmerman. The mystery in this book is the sickness of a character that seems to be from excess laudanum administered without her knowledge. I again enjoyed the hero and heroine’s fun relationship and the Victorian setting. The mystery kept me guessing who might be using a drug to either murder or keep a person dependent to use their money. A fun series if you’d like something light to listen to.

Watching

Dune Part 2, Theater. This continues the story of Dune (obviously, lol) and it’s really good. It does such a great job of clarifying a sometimes confusing book and the visuals are stunning as is the acting job of Austin Butler – wow.

Resident Alien, Netflix. In the first episode of this funny comic book inspired series, an alien crash lands on earth and kills a man to be able to assume his identity. That is the last time the alien kills – the rest of the series is pretty funny as he tries to act human while searching for the rest of his aircraft’s pieces. The actor who portrays the alien is amazing – the things he can do with his face! And the characters of the small town are all fun. We’ve enjoyed this a lot and laughed out loud at times.

The Tender Bar, Amazon. I had heard about this movie based on a memoir a while ago and it is a good story. It’s very real in that bad things happen but how the characters band together and how the uncle becomes a father figure to the boy (who grows up to write the book) is special. I really enjoyed it. (It’s directed by George Clooney and stars Ben Affleck.)

That’s it for another addition of the Good Things List!

If you’d like to see more of what I’m enjoying, you can check out all the Good Things Lists here. I’d love to know what you think – if you’ve tried any of these or what you’d recommend. Leave a comment below with your thoughts!

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