Nature Blog by Jenny Bourne

At last there’s been an extremely cold snap, with minus temps bringing widespread early morning ground frost. Not yet as prolonged and severe as the end of last year, when many of us lost plants and varieties that had previously weathered such cold snaps as the past week or so;

The old fruit trees in the wildlife area that have been managed and harvested by the Conservation Fruit Tree volunteer team will be receiving an annual winter prune at the end of the month. Yet again my suggestions for a quick wassail ceremony to encourage growth and good fruiting have not been met with too much enthusiasm…

Christmas Day was mild, dull and damp, prompting a quick visit to a very quiet allotments site to deliver new gift plants. A bumble bee was foraging on the newly flowering mahonia;

For the past years or so you may have noticed a tall, quiet and bespectacled chap, usually in wellies walking to and back from the south west corner of the site, sometimes carrying bundles of hazel sticks or fearsome looking cutting tools. This would have been Andrew Saunders,

This must be going down as one of the wettest Novembers on record – another full rain gauge and it has sometimes felt this month as though we’ve had rain almost every day since Hallowe’en!