February 8th, 2014

Winter has made it's presence know once again, with temperatures dropping down to well below freezing.  This has meant that little work has been achieved outdoors this week, but still a few pieces of news to share.

A gang of robins visited our house on Thursday morning and hung out just outside our living room window.  We he've slowly begun to see a number of our local birds come out of hiding.  I hope to get a shot of our resident hummingbird soon.

Looking plump and just a little bit mangy.

As you can see, things got a little frozen.

Some more signs of life despite the cold weather.  Tiny red buds appearing on the rose bush outside our front door.

Some of the hardier trees evening beginning to produce leaves.

One of our next big projects.  This is the "Jelly King" crab apple tree at the back of our lot.  It produced a multitude of small bright red crab apples for us last year, which we were able to turn into delicious crab apple jelly.  As you can see thought, it's in serious need of some TLC.  To the left you can see another apple tree that is being completely invaded by the crab.  This one's going to take a while.

Artichoke sprouts coming up under the grow light.

We have plans this upcoming week to put up a fence around our growing space, on which we will be espaliering 4 to 5 more fruit trees.  Hopefully the weather improves a little and we can get the ball rolling on even more projects!