Signs of life

I ordered some fruit and nut plants back in February as part of the general aim of self-sufficiency. They arrived ten days ago and we have been busy planting and watering them. It has been good to have the new plants to dote on as a distraction from pandemic news...

I have been watching them anxiously for signs of life and nearly all have rewarded me with progress. The picture is of the shoots on the peach tree, 'Reliance', which is supposed to be able to take the winters here. Frankly, I am doubtful, but I hope that I am wrong! [Edited to say that actually this is the sweet cherry tree, not the peach!] The other plants include hazelnuts, blackberries, a mulberry bush and a cherry tree. 'I had a little nut tree' has been going round in my head now for days...

The only things yet to show any indication of growth are the raspberry canes.

I was able to go into work on Wednesday of this week, which was great. I had a list of things I couldn't deal with while working at home and managed to deal with most of them. I was back to working from home on Thursday and found it was very hard to settle to anything after having a day at work. Uncertainty is the worst part of it: it will be good to get into a set routine again.

Wild November

 November has been a fairly memorable month so far, in terms of weather. On the first of the month, gale force winds brought down several trees and left us without power for two days.

This red cedar (Eastern juniper) in our back yard was the most significant casualty. It also took down the power line from the house to the barn and greenhouse.

Mike has been busy with clippers, chipper, and chainsaw since. I still can't get over the amazing colour of the cedar wood, once it is cut up.

A closer look at the root ball of the tree shows just how shallow the soil is here: the roots have wrapped themselves around the limestone rocks below.

A killing frost in the first week put paid to all the tender crops in the greenhouse, so I spent last Sunday clearing them all out and putting the greenhouse to bed for the winter. I'm glad I did, because  this week we had significant snowfall on Monday, followed by record-breaking cold.

It might be an interesting winter!

Ash again...

A sad day today as we watched three tree surgeons take down the big ash tree at the rear of the house. It was very close to the property and with the advance of the Emerald Ash Borer through Ontario, it seemed sensible to anticipate the inevitable and remove the whole tree rather than just the branches which were overhanging the house.

I didn't envy the three arborists their job, but they were very methodical about it, with the lower limbs going first, and then the upper ones.

Until all that was left was the central trunk to come down.

There is an impressive amount of burnable wood left for Mike to cut into smaller lengths for the fire.

I counted the rings in the lower part of the trunk and I think the tree was 64 years old. Our house was built in the early 1970s, so the tree was already 20 years old then. 

It's amazing how much lighter it is in the house with the tree down, even with no leaves on it!

Ashes to ashes

The Emerald Ash Borer beetle is munching its way towards us from southwestern Ontario. On Friday I was talking to an arborist who works to the west of Toronto. He told me that he is spending nearly all his time now cutting down dead ash trees.

Since most of our area of woodland is ash, I spend a lot of time thinking about how this pest is going to impact our landscape when it arrives here. At this time of year, when the ash trees have lost their leaves, I wander through the woods to see what other deciduous trees there are: they're easier to spot when the ash are bare. We have some birch and oak trees, but very few compared to all the ash.

On the bright side, we won't be short of firewood in the future, but I think I'd rather have the living trees.

It has been a spectacular Fall this year. Some years the colours are over in a flash, but this year they seem to have lasted for weeks.

Easter parade

I couldn't have asked for better weather for the Easter break. It got increasingly warm and sunny over the course of the weekend.

The bees don't have many open flowers to visit at the moment, so these anemones growing in the cracks of the paving at the front of our house were proving popular:

And the daffodils are finally starting to open - a full month later than the earliest I've seen them (in 2012). I think they're a bit shorter than normal, too. The last of the ice melted from the lake on Saturday (April 19th) - definitely the latest we've seen it still frozen.

I spent the whole weekend either cooking or gardening. All the tomatoes and peppers were transplanted into pots in the greenhouse (208 tomato plants and 34 peppers this year) and I dug dandelions by the dozen out of three of the vegetable beds.

The children gathered up all the bits of tree which had fallen during the ice storm - we'll turn those into woodchips for chicken litter. We didn't lose too many large branches near the house, but up by the hayfield is another matter. There are several fairly large ash trees up there which look like this one:

I think Mike is going to be busy with his chainsaw when the ground dries out!

Relentless winter

I suspect that the first week in January is probably too early to be getting fed up of winter weather. We haven't had a full thaw since before Christmas, so the layer of ice that fell in the pre-Christmas ice storm is still there, and every so often the weather warms up enough to melt the snow on top of it, but never enough to melt that underlying layer of ice. Which makes walking outside tricky.

The children have not gone back to school yet as the last two days have been extremely cold and windy. Today we've had snow all day with 30mph/50km/h winds, visibility has been pretty low at times. You can see from the trees that the wind has pasted the west-facing trunks with snow.

Temperatures at the end of last week were around -25°C/-13°F. It's a bit warmer this week, but with the wind, it doesn't really feel it! We've been using the kids' toboggans (and the kids!) to bring wood for the fires down from the barns.

We don't rely on the fires now in the way we did in our first winter here, as the geothermal heating copes pretty well in averagely cold temperatures, but warmly glowing logs are a very welcome sight once the temperature dips below about -15°C/5°F!

Ice storm

We have had two day's worth of rain, which wouldn't have been a problem except that the air temperatures were below freezing, so it formed a lethal layer of ice over everything and has caused a lot of damage to trees and to power lines.

Our power went out yesterday afternoon and still isn't back sixteen hours later. We're running off our solar panel-powered backup batteries, but as there's no sunshine around today we're using as little of it as possible - just keeping the fridge and water pump going, and non-turnoffable things like the smoke alarms. And the woodstove in the kitchen is coming in handy for making hot drinks and keeping us all warm!

Yesterday the ice formed a layer about half an inch/1cm thick over the snow, which made walking pretty difficult - almost impossible in places. I found that my snow shoes were the best way of getting around.

Overnight, some of the precipitation turned to snow, which has made it much easier to walk outside this morning. I hope it has made life a bit easier for the crews working to clear the roads and reconnect the power lines.

It looks like the worst of the storm is over for now. Not an experience I'd want to repeat too often.

I did manage to (inexpertly) ice the Christmas cake yesterday. Seems I chose an apt design!

Decking the halls

A warm day on Thursday removed the last of the previous week's snow, but it's back to cold weather again now. Averagely cold, though, so not really something to complain about and it looks like there is snow in the forecast for the next week or two.

This morning I went out with the dog to identify a suitable candidate for this year's Christmas tree. I found one in the line of trees that is growing in between the two halves of the hayfield and marked it so that Mike and Child#2 can go and harvest it later.

Then I went into the woods to gather some evergreen branches for additional decorations. We've got a few dogwoods growing around the property and I harvested some of the side shoots off those as well, to add a bit of contrast. I really love being able to gather all these things from our own backyard!

And here's the finished product - a simple garland of greenery over the verandah. Now all it needs is an inch or two of snow and it'll look fittingly festive.

UPDATE (Monday morning): The weather obligingly gave me the necessary finishing touch. ;-)

Bright berries

Oh dear, over a month since my last post? It's been a busy one, I must say, but I hadn't realised it had been that long. 

I got home from a short trip back to the UK on Tuesday. The difference in the scenery between there and here at the moment is stark. Here there are very few leaves left on the trees and the main colour is from dogwood branches and the occasional bright berry. Over there, a mild October has meant that most of the trees still have their leaves - and there are still roses in flower!

I noticed the berries on this tall shrub at the edge of the highway as we drove to Toronto last week and was pleased to find some on a local road here today. I've tried without success to identify the plant - if you know what it is, please comment! I don't think I've seen it before and the berries are a beautifully bright orange.

OK, answering my own question here, but I think this plant might be Winterberry (Ilex verticillata). It's certainly well-named!

Plum preserve

When we lived in the UK I used to buy a fruit preserve by Bonne Maman - I think it was plums or peaches (or perhaps both). It was good as a fruit pie or crumble filling or to go with ice cream - it was softer in texture than a jam, but sweet.

I haven't seen the same product over here, but when I saw the plums coming along in the orchard I remembered it and thought I'd aim for something similar if the crop was a good one. The variety we're growing is 'Stanley'.

Mike and I harvested the plums today, fighting the wasps for them. There were over eight pounds in all - not bad for our first harvest - and I've converted all of them into preserve, in two batches. Once they'd been stoned and quartered, each batch weighed about four pounds, to which I added four cups of sugar and a little water. Then I just brought the mixture to a boil until my cooking thermometer read just under 100°C/210°F. As it's not a jam, you don't need to worry about reaching setting point and they don't need long cooking - about 15 minutes at boiling point is plenty.

The skins turn the cooking liquid a deep, ruby red, which looks fabulous with the light behind it.

This quantity of plums made nine one-pint jars of preserve. I processed eight of them in a hot-water canner to make sure they won't spoil in storage and thought we'd have the other one in the next week or two as a dessert. But Child#2 spotted the jar this evening and thought it would be really good to have it in a plum crumble RIGHT NOW. For quality control purposes, naturally.

He knows me too well. Guess what's in the oven...

May frost

This strawberry plant was touched by this morning's frost. The temperature dipped to about 1°C/34°F.

After a few years of frost damage to our fruit trees, I was concerned that we would have the same problem this year, even though the trees are far less advanced than they were in 2012, where the warm spring made them much more vulnerable to a frost. There is an interesting series of Critical Temperature Charts on the Colorado State University site which explain at which point the fruit is most likely to be damaged by frost. Generally, once the buds are fully opened, a temperature of -2°C/28°F will kill 10% of the flower buds, while -4°C/25°F will kill 90%. That's what happened last year, but we weren't close to that last night, so I'm hopeful.

The apricot tree flowered last week and there are embryonic apricots already visible:

The pear trees are fully in flower right now:
 

While the apples are at the stage known as 'full pink':

The only crop that was damaged was the asparagus: the visible spears won't be edible. Glad I harvested some for our lunch yesterday!

Botanical gardens, Berlin

I've been in Berlin for a few days on a business trip this week, with two days free at the end because of stupid flight pricing. Yesterday I went on a fantastic bike tour of the city centre with a group of other tourists from all over the world. That was great fun (especially the part where we were cycling through the Tiergarten: the park is really beautiful at this time of year).

Today I headed for the botanical gardens. I got there just before they officially opened, but the entrance gate was already manned, so I paid my €6 and set off into the garden, armed with a printed guide to the best parts to visit in the autumn. For about half an hour I didn't see anyone else at all and felt as though I had the whole space to myself. It was a sunny, dewy, morning with just a touch of mist in the air.

I wasn't expecting to see many flowers, so late in the year, but the trees more than made up for that. The season is less advanced here than it is at home and the trees are looking beautiful. The arboretum is full of interesting-looking small paths which beg to be explored: it doesn't feel at all formal, apart from the labels on the plants.

One that caught my attention in the North American part of the arboretum was this witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana). I hadn't realised that this was native to our part of the world. Looking at its range, we're right at the northern edge of it, but it would be great if we could grow this in our woods at home.

Also in flower in the arboretum was this striking plant:

This is Cimicifuga simplex, otherwise known as bugbane. This is native to Asia, but the North American equivalent is Actaea (or Cimicifuga) racemosa, a.k.a. black cohosh, black snakeroot or fairy candle. Another one to look out for at home.

The roses in the garden were mostly showing off their hips. These are from the dog rose:

There were one or two brave roses still flowering. I didn't make a note of the variety, but this one looked lovely with its light spritzing of dew:

The glasshouses and their contents were architecturally impressive:

I narrowly missed taking a photo of a small brown newt which was sitting on this plant the second before I pressed the shutter button:

I've never been wild about cacti, but there's something about this group that's almost cuddly.

And did I mention that the trees were gorgeous?

Having spaces like this almost makes it worth living in a city, although I must admit that I liked it best in that first half-hour when I felt I was only sharing it with the birds. By the time I left there was quite a long queue at the entrance, so the garden is clearly appreciated by the city's inhabitants and visitors.

Seasonal confusion

This morning was very autumnal - lots of heavy dew and spiders' webs losing their effectiveness everywhere.

But in amongst all the signs of the end of summer were some completely contradictory ones. Some of the trees which suffered so much in the dry spell are now putting forth leaves of a decidedly Spring green. Here's a mature European buckthorn with new leaves alongside this year's fruit:

And these are very young ash trees, showing new leaves next to the ones damaged in July:

This renewed growth is very similar to what's happening with my cabbage plants. This is the first year I've seen it happen.

Change of scenery

I've often travelled to Toronto on the train, but haven't ever headed east of our area by rail. Yesterday I took the train to Ottawa for the first time and was looking forward to a new view through the train window.

Once you get past Brockville, the landscape is very different from the more heavily-populated Toronto-Montreal corridor. The stretch between here and Toronto is a mixture of farmland and industrial development, with a few sections of park and beach. The lands either side of the line to Ottawa from Brockville are very different: evidence of human activity is much less obvious and there are lots of pines, boggy open areas and stands of dead, waterlogged trees.

The weather changed suddenly yesterday evening, as I came home. First the wind got up, producing a fairly scary dust-storm as the dry soil next to the road near the station in Fallowfield was lifted into the air. Then the rain poured down, settling the dust and drenching the commuters returning to their cars from the bus stops. The storm clouds transformed the landscape again. This is the view from Fallowfield station:

The reflections of the huge clouds in the pools of the wetlands we went through were beautiful, but hard to record with a camera because of the speed of the train. This next one is the best I could muster. This view is typical of the boggy nature of the scenery. I can't help but feel sorry for the men who laid the tracks in the first place: they must have been eaten alive by biting insects...