JANUARY! Bet this makes you feel cold, but at this time of the year, it is to be expected. We are getting some of the chores done but we are not taking a
hard line on that and the jobs will get done eventually, we are not on a clock, so to speak, only nature's clock. We are getting a few touches of frost, but along with those, blue skies seem to be in the offing too, so we are making the most of those. The new flower beds outside of the hut in the seating area is taking shape and the beds are now prepared to receive the trees and plants when we get them. As we have mentioned before, we have 4 more fruit trees coming soon, which will be planted around the seating area and they are;
1: Cordon Cherry 'Sweetheart'. An excellent dark red dessert cherry to extend the season - picking until very late in September. Very heavy cropping. The fruits ripen over a very long period so if heavy rain spoils some of the crop, there will be plenty more to come. Excellent flavour.
2: Cordon Cherry 'Cherokee'. A very popular dessert cherry. Produces large dark red fruits that are almost black when fully ripe with an excellent sweet flavour. Can be grown in wet areas as the fruits are less prone to splitting than other varieties. Very heavy cropping.
3: Cordon Plum 'Marjorie's Seedling'. A very popular late dessert/culinary plum producing medium-large purple fruits with a very good sweet flavour. The fruit hangs well on the tree until the first autumn frosts. Heavy cropping. Very resistant to disease. Can be grown in the north.
4: Cordon plum 'Opal'. An excellent early dessert plum, similar to Victoria but with a better flavour. Medium-sized reddish-purple thin-skinned fruits with golden flesh and superb sweet flavour. One of the most reliable varieties. Can be grown in the north.
These trees are grafted onto the new dwarfing rootstocks Gisela and only a small tree is produced, around 2m (6ft 6in). Minarette® fruit trees are ideal for the smaller garden as they can be planted as close as 60-90cm (2-3ft) apart. We can have them planted very quickly once they arrive and we are looking forward to doing so.
We also have 6 Globe Artichoke plants which shall arrive any time from now (January), and these will go in a new bed just for them. We have two types of artichoke and have 3 of each coming, so that will be more than enough for the two of us, and they are;
Purple Globe - Attractive and delicious! Perfect at the back of a perennial border or in the kitchen garden, this perennial plant produces abundant yields of tender and flavourful purple artichokes, ideal with a light French dressing or dipped in butter with a hint of garlic.
Green Globe - A large and striking perennial vegetable with silvery-green deeply toothed leaves that are good-looking enough to grow in the ornamental garden. The spiky flower buds are cut from summer onwards, with each plant producing up to 10 artichokes a season.
We have transplanted another four sycamore trees into the open field to further build up the tree we want to protect the orchard from the North winds. These we took from the mound as there are a dozen or more self-seeded that cannot be allowed to grow there because they are too close to the school, would shadow the orchard when they got too large in the future, and they may also be unstable because of the soil that is on the mound is not too compressed and may well be too loose to grip the tree roots as it should, and we certainly do not want a tree from our land falling onto the school at some time. We have hundreds of flower bulbs bursting through the soil just about everywhere you look, it looks as though this year will see a massive increase in spring flowers all around the gardens which should look beautiful, and we shall of course take photos of all of these flowers as they make their appearance.
We spotted a Grey Squirrel on the mound trees at the back of the sand ring over the Christmas period, but it took off pretty quickly and has not been seen since, and as this was the first time we have spotted one in our fields, we are assuming it was just passing through? Time will tell. As we have planted 17 nut trees, it could be tempting for them to move in at some later date when the trees are big enough to bear lots of nuts, but there are not many large trees that could provide homes for squirrels so we may be lucky. 
Grey squirrel
At the moment we are taking advantage of the lull in the wet weather and getting out into the gardens to carry on working and get a lot of the heavier jobs done before the weather starts to warm up for the summer. One of the jobs is to get an arch up at the top of the ramp made from cut trees and bound together with wire to form the arch which will be fixed to posts on either side of the ramp, once done, we have a white jasmine to plant on one side and allow it to grow over the arch which should look beautiful once established though this will take some years.
That's all for this update, but we shall post again at the end of January.