I chose to have deciduous trees in my garden because although they are bare in winter they are so pretty in autumn and it is always a treat to see the first new leaves in spring. I especially appreciate it after last summer when it was so hot and dry. I was quite worried about my garden while I was evacuated for two weeks. I mean I was worried that my house might burn down but I was also worried that my plants would die from lack of water but they all made it.

The apple tree has a nice lot of blossoms. I thought I would lose the lot before I could really enjoy them as it is windy here in spring but I didn’t. The tree looks untidy because it wasn’t pruned when it should have been.

My Japanese Maple acquired a bit of a lean in its first year and still looks a bit tipsy but the leaves are nice. I think that it must be different from what is known as a Japanese Maple in the USA because this one has red leaves all the time. This was planted in 2015. The lovely, light green Gleditsia has also had its issues. After the first year the leaves at top of the tree stopped growing so when last winter came I decided to snip the top of the tree off. I hope that it will encourage it to grow better. This was also planted in 2015.

When I came back home after the fires this Japanese Weeping Maple did not look good, leaves were dropping and the remaining ones had turned rather dark. I wasn’t sure if it was because autumn was approaching or it was struggling in the dry weather. Anyway, it’s back. Not very tall but a lovely shape and colour. It’s 3 years old now.

I did look up the name of this plant once but I have forgotten it. When we moved in it was a small and rather straggly tree. A branch broke off and David had our neighbour chainsaw it almost to extinction but it is a stubborn plant and came back. It is more shrub-like now and the former garden guys used to prune it into a more attractive shape. Most of the time it is not very pretty but for a few weeks in spring, it gets these wonderful flowers.