Winter arrives at Chenevaux

The new (not quite finished) pergola in the farmhouse back garden.

The last day of January and the winter is about to begin!  Yesterday morning started off reasonably mild but as the day went on it got progressively colder until it started snowing late afternoon and then we woke this morning to lovely clear blue skies and brilliant white snow everywhere.
The mimosa, which leads a precarious life, has grown like topsy over the past few months.  It has little tiny flower buds on it in amongst the feathery leaves which have all been swathed in a lightweight tarpaulin and tied up with string in the hope that this gives enough protection against the forthcoming frosts.  The forecast is for -11 later in the week!
To explain about the mimosa's precarious life - the previous owner was given some seeds by her daughter who lived in Morocco.  She planted the seeds on the front wall of the gite, which faces south - makes good sense initially.  I don't know how many seeds there were but the one that germinated and grew into a tree was right up against the wall and in front of a window, so when we were renovating the gite it had to be moved.  By chance we were having the swimming pool excavated so a digger was available and with one big scoop a new hole was dug, and with another the whole rootball was dug out.  Job done!  Only thing is that the tree is now in a more exposed place and if we have a cold winter, which is often the case, it suffers terribly.  To the point that a couple of years ago it was so badly frost damaged that we cut it down to the ground completely thinking that it was dead.  But then, a good few months later it started sprouting out of the ground so we decided to give it another chance.  By last winter it was the size of a shrub so we covered it in fleece for the winter, which was successful.  This winter it is at least 4m high and 3m diameter so the piece of fleece is far too small and the tarpaulin seemed the best thing.  We will see what happens and keep our fingers crossed.  I did manage to get some seeds to germinate about 4 years ago now and have one small tree left in my greenhouse just in case.
This isn't the only example of plants regrowing here - when a gingko had its main stem chewed off by a deer I thought the whole thing would die, but that too sent up a new stem.  So now, if something looks dead, we leave it in the ground for a year or so to make entirely sure!
The snow today had really settled on the branches of trees and shrubs so we had to go round and give them a shake to get it off. Some young sliver birch trees were bent over to the ground but soon sprang back.  Then we had to rescue the fruit cage.

A heavy load on the fruit cage netting.

As you can see the snow is really weighing down the netting even though we put wires under it for extra support.  It was only last week that we cut back some of the branches on the conifer but the ones still overhanging the cage were so heavy with snow that a couple had snapped.  Using a walking stick and a broom we gently banged the netting from underneath and got ourselves well and truly wet, but gradually the snow fell through the holes.  Then we tackled the tree, by the time we finished the snow that had been melting was starting to freeze again and there were icicles hanging from the branches,

Pergola in progress.

We have gradually been accumulating old oak beams under our open barn - a lot from the ruin that we have been working on recently.  So a pergola seemed to be a great way of using some of them!  Roses do really well here as we have clay soil and the local farmer kindly brings us muck from either the cows or sheep.  David Austin roses are far and away the most successful, and having ordered some which were delivered earlier in the month this will be the perfect home for them.  There is still another line of horizontal beams to go in and some finishing off to do then I can get planting! Weather permitting that is.