From one enthusiastic apple guy in Wisconsin to another -- welcome! And don't worry -- as you see here, I know all about being long-winded! Pruning is a great first step for getting your old trees into more manageable condition. I've heard it said that there really is no right or wrong time to prune -- you can do it this time of season if you like and the tree will have plenty of time to recover over the rest of the summer. The only questionable time to prune is very late in the growing season or immediately following growing -- say in September through November or so. Otherwise have at 'er. I've also heard it said that you shouldn't prune off more than about 1/3 of the total wood of a tree in any given year. This is a rough guideline but will minimize the shock to the tree and allow it to continue to fruit (well if not this year then next year) in addition to development of youthful vegetative growth. If on the other hand you just lopped the whole trunk off at like 5 feet high and left no branches, it will take many years for that tree to recover and resume fruiting. The tree probably wouldn't die, but it would be a major shock to the tree and send it into a major vegetative growth mode. So 1/3 is a good balancing point of "a lot, but not too much". You can continue pruning from year to year in this manner over the course of 2 or 3 years if necessary until the tree takes the shape and size that you want. Be aware that any named varieties of apples do not grow on their own roots. They are all grafted onto selected rootstocks, with weird names such as Bud 9 or MM 111. You can research rootstocks that are good for your soil quality and your needs for disease resistance, the final size of the tree that you would like, etc., and then purchase trees grafted to those rootstocks. Soil amendments are not at all a bad idea, although I'm honestly not certain how big of a deal it really is for apples, which it seems can grow well in all kinds of different soils, especially if you select a proper rootstock for your conditions. Careful evaluation and selection of good candidate apple varieties before going out shopping will also be beneficial. The more homework you do up front, the more happy you will be several years down the road when your trees finally begin fruiting in earnest. Developed in Minnesota, Honeycrisp is a fantastic option for Wisconsin's climate, and it so happens that it is as excellent for making cider as it is for eating. Very juicy and chock full of sugar. If you are very interested in making cider, you will probably also want tart varieties to blend in with the Honeycrisp, Red Delicious, and any other sweet varieties that don't have a whole lot of tartness to balance. I'm not very familiar with Wolf River but if memory serves, this might be a good tart variety? Personally I'm grafting a number of branches on my trees over to old English heritage cider apple varieties such as Foxwhelp, Kingston Black, Ashmead's Kernel, etc. These all have good tartness as well as some bitterness, or what some might call "snap" or "bite" beyond just tartness. Of these, I am having the best success so far growing the Foxwhelp, but who knows what the future holds. Of all my other trees, I am happiest so far with the Honeycrisp and the Cortland. Cortland is early bearing and is just a beautiful tree I think, although it tends very much to be tip-bearing on last year's wood so you must be very careful not to over-prune it or you'll be snipping off most of the fruiting wood! It is a delicious apple to eat and excellent for pies and sauce, and suited perfectly for Wisconsin's climate. Personally I do not care for Red Delicious, but I have heard many say that when eaten ripe right off the tree, they are indeed delicious. And I know they do grow well in Wisconsin, as my grandfather had several trees and they produced heavily at least every other year (biennial bearing). As for trees to avoid, I would look up the USDA Hardiness Zone that you live in, and stay away from any varieties that are intended for zones far warmer than your own. For example, I enjoy Braeburn and Granny Smith apples, but as far as I know, we haven't had a lot of success growing those types here in Wisconsin, as they originated from warmer climates and seem unable to adapt well here. Your trees can definitely produce fruit of superior size and quality if you take an active role in their care. Untended trees may produce many bushels of fruit, but it may be very small (i.e., mostly core, and therefore not so much to eat!), full of worms or other disease, all green rather than red or yellow due to excessive vegetation and shading, etc. If you can remove much of the vegetative growth each year leaving most of the fruiting wood, and perhaps thin out the fruits and/or fruit buds each year, your fruit will be larger (less core and more to eat!), more colorful, easier to spray, easier to reach from the ground or a short ladder, etc. No matter what you do, have fun with it. That is what it's really all about. Enjoy.

I was visiting here for a while before I even knew there was a picture gallery. So for people coming into conifers to see pictures I believe a lot would miss that link. Besides it is best here and we can discuss it without someone maybe missing it. As for links they are fine and it has put me through to some great sites but I like to see what people are really able to grow in their gardens and they provide way better pictures and more of them. If it was't for the pictures and discussion here I wouldn't have realized about staking some conifers and letting them skirt which gives me more options. Cher

Oh, and in case it wasn't clear from my earlier post, I don't think you should discount soapstone at all--I would use it again in the right setting. I just wouldn't use *our* particular soapstone. We didn't get samples and test, and we should have (it was at the top of our budget so we just went with the cheapest stone they had--mistake!) I remember someone here, Marcolo I think, getting samples a few months after ours went in and commenting that our stone looked like Ray Liotta after the testing. ;) But I do still love it for the reasons we chose it, so I would look for a harder soapstone that had those great qualities with fewer of the downsides. All soapstone will show some wear, but usually it's more like a patina, and many can be oiled or sanded to hide this if you want. I don't think most people have the issue with the edges gouging and breaking down like we do. A few random thoughts, too--our sink cabinet was much the same as yours. In our before pics you can see one door completely missing--it wouldn't close so we finally just took it off! Our sink run had been built in a later remodel (using, we think, parts of the original cabinets) because the original sinks of that era were freestanding behemoths (beautiful, but rarely kept in remodels in the 30s-50s sadly) so it was common for those cabinets to be remodeled even if others were kept. Ours were very poor condition (only mediocre quality to start, and many years old with water leaks and such to boot) and could not be salvaged. They were also three-sided built-in-place (very common in that era) which limited how easily we could reuse or adapt them. And I love love love tile counters, but we got it priced out and it was well above the cost of any stone options to have it done well (critical for it to be level--while we were fine doing our backsplash ourselves, we were not confident in our ability to get a perfectly level surface on the counter) using epoxy grout (which local places said was the solution to icky grout, something we wanted to avoid--dunno what the thinking on this is these days, as this was three years ago). If you have strong DIY tile skills, maybe an option, but otherwise, it's probably not worth the cost. And last (sorry for the length!) two thoughts on drawers: yes, they can add runners if you want (may need to replace the boxes though depending on drawers), but beeswax did wonders for ours! Try that first for sure. We did find that it was less costly to remodel the areas where we did not open walls beyond electrical, so I think if you can divide the kitchen by walls, it would be feasible to keep the Hoosier and drawers but gut the other areas. However, we also had and were keeping plaster walls--drywall is a lot cheaper so then it might make more sense to go down to the studs and just put up new wall. It may also affect code requirements, too. Where we did not open walls, our existing wiring was grandfathered in (except for counters, since cabinets/counters were new). That did save us some money too.

Thanks so much! The archives here have been more helpful than the whole rest of the internet honestly. The 25% or so photos that remain after the great Houzz coup are all really lovely and helpful as well. Yes, that's the "plastic ball in a box" filter for the pump that came with the house in 2012. So all things considered it's held up well! It's in almost total shade so we've never had any problems with algae, just being too lazy to skim out the leaves. It really had become its own little ecosystem by the time it finally started leaking for real, so I figure we'll give the new one a chance to do the same. I'm very eager to get some actual plants in and around there again. And we miss our toads! There are visible holes in the old lining, which is also very definitely not 45mil EPDM. The pavers are all just plunked down at random and slide in all the time, and there is visible slippage (please note the angle of poor St. Francis there; that "cascade" underneath him used to be flush with the rest of the rim of the pond). That's actually my only worry, especially being literally below sea level, is what it looks like under there and whether we'll need to worry about the structural integrity of the hole/rim itself. But we'll find out! Liner arrives today, 100lbs. Sorry, UPS guy. And I learned, probably on here, that doubling up on gloves is not at all overkill when dealing with the foam! Again many many thanks for the reassurance that at least in theory we're doing it right! I hope to have pretty pictures to share soon.