The Christmas tree came down today. It isn't quite twelth night, but it seemed time. It had been up for a fortnight and I've been back to work. It was a common cut Norway spruce, and it kept its needles extremely well. This is probably because it was very fresh, and the house is rather cold. It was a local tree, grown only twelve miles away, and in death it will not be wasted. The branches will be shredded and used as mulch, and the trunk will go into the log burner.
I'll probably bestow the mulch on the blueberries. They like acid soil and moisture, and a pine mulch should suit them fine. They don't like manure, and the pine needles will remind me not to chuck 6X on them when I'm doing the black currants. They need little in the way of care and maintenance, and are worth growing when you look at the price of a small punnet of blueberries in the supermarket. I got a useful little recipe book from the Trehane stand at Hampton Court this year. Blueberries simmered lightly with amaretto and spooned over crushed amaretti biscuits just before serving have gone down very well with the people I've tried them on so far.
I pruned the grapevine today, before the sap started to rise, so that it wouldn't bleed. Due to a failure of record keeping I don't know what variety it is. The grapes last year were vaguely grape flavoured, small and pippy, despite my best efforts at thinning, but the chickens liked them. The leaves are excellent for dolmades, more use than the grapes really.
Back in November, before the snow started, I was going to get another cherry tree. I said the same thing last year and then with the hard winter never got round to it. I had better get myself organised, or I'll have missed my chance for another season. It must have been a tough couple of years for bare root growers.
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