Winter

A winter of extremes, at least for this island of generally moderate weather. Mostly mild and dry, except for November, when we had about half our average annual rainfall, and then February. While Northern and Eastern Europe froze, we were at the junction of air masses, with this result - the heaviest snowfall in 56 years. Snow lay for a couple of days at this altitude (160m), but there were several more falls on the mountains, and in mid-March there was still some snow on the highest peaks. All this did bring some much needed precipitation, and the water pressure is now strong.

The main work over the winter has been tree planting, preceeded by a certain amount of clearing. My neighbour Jaume helped out with his larger chainsaw to fell a couple of big pines, including one which had fallen into another tree and was lying at about 45 degrees, eek.

Just before Chistmas I got a message from slow food to say that my trees were ready, so headed out to Vivers Llabres in Manacor to collect them. A very impressive operation they are too http://www.viversllabres.net/ . Some of the figs were a bit diminutive, but all seem to be growing sprouting well now. For the stone and pip fruit I put in 3 apricots, 3 apples and a plum, and then 8 figs: five from Slow Food, one from the local nursery and two cheapies from another nursery. The latter two are not Mallorquin varieties, and they are showing no signs of life! The pip and stone are all Mallorquin except for two of the apples, from Menorca. I also put in a couple more citrus, a lemon and a Mallorquin mandarin, just before the snow, but it didn't seem to do them any harm. The main danger is breaking of branches, but all my trees were OK.