This was a bad idea or I bought a Pear Stick on the Internet.

A good idea but a bad time, a bad idea, an uninformed idea? 95 + degrees and fruit trees and bushes arrive by Fedex. Why?

This story begins back when I mapped our fruit orchard and realised that we need another pear tree pollinator for our Moonglow Pear. It's plenty old enough and large enough to fruit and never has. Turns out the problem MIGHT be that no other pear tree is within 50 feet. We looked locally for pear trees and couldn't find one, well except for one place that is selling them for $150.00. I became tempted by ads I was receiving from Stark Brothers Nursery. One day they even sent an email saying these pear trees are ready to ship to your house and they're on sale AND you're new so you can have $10 off coupon AND if you add another thing or two to your cart you will have free shipping. I kept thinking about it and decided to give it a try. This was a couple weeks back. I guess I figured if companies can safely ship baby chicks in cool weather perhaps nurseries are able to safely ship plants in hot weather. A cool pack perhaps like chicks get a heat pack? So I ordered two trees and two elderberry plants all for a very low price with the sale and my coupon and free shipping. I waited patiently and a week or so later my package had shipped, it was due to arrive on the 19th then that changed to the 20th. The 20th was due to be around 100 degrees! But surely the company has this all figured out, why would they sell me these plants if they can't get them to me safely...I reassured myself.

Then the package arrived in the afternoon when it was something like 100 degrees. Even KitKat knows this was indeed a bad idea.

KitKat turned away from the pitiful plants and turned his attention to the up side. There's always an up side to things. A BOX, we got a box to play in OUTSIDE. KitKat and Rufus quickly claimed the box.

So the cats got a box and the humans got (half) dead sticks. I thought they'd be bigger. I thought they'd be more alive. The trees are really quite little and skinny. Suddenly this didn't seem like a good idea at all. I tried to perk up the sticks, actually the elderberry plants look okay and there are 4 of them not two. One pot had one elderberry in it and the other had three all kind of rootbound together so I soaked them and they came apart. The pear tree (the real reason for this order) and the apple tree look really bad. I gave them time in the shade and water and we dug very good holes for them and gave them good dirt and compost. I don't feel confident that we will get the needed pollinating pear tree from this but I'll try. In the meantime maybe those super expensive trees more locally will go on clearance......

Our $27.00 grafted 2 types in 1 pear stick.

If you can not see it, the tree/stick is easy to miss, it has the yellow tag hanging on it.

My poor little pear tree stick :-(.

There is a lesson in this, next time just order the box for the cats and forget the plants.