It's not too late!

For any people who took part in the Tree O'Clock challenge between 11am and noon on Saturday 5th December, its not too late to send in the photos and details of your tree planting. National Tree Week and Breathing Places have extended the deadline for the photos to be sent in for counting. We can still "plant a world record"!

The Breathing Places website says that one record has already been broken (most trees planted by 100 people at a single site in one hour). In fact, this was broken at three different sites in the UK. Amazingly, at Gransha Park, alongside the river Foyle in Ireland, 26,422 trees were planted in one hour by a group of 100 people. And the main record (most trees planted by any number of people in one hour) can still be broken, if you send in your photos in to the organisers. Click here for instructions on how to do this.

We managed to plant a tree or two in our garden, as I'm sure many of you did too. However, this wasn't really part of the Tree O'Clock challenge. We bought some trees beforehand which weren't on the list of six trees provided for free by the organisers. So our results aren't really valid, and we didn't send the photos in. But I guess the aim of the event was to plant a good number of trees, and this, we have achieved :-)

The first plant in the ground was a Contoneaster tree. The photo was taken by me after school today.

Hopefully, next year, the berries from the tree will do a great job on feeding the birds too. I wonder what this shrub will look like in a couple of years?

We also planted a Rowan tree, which we did get for free from the organisers- but on the Sunday, so, again, it didn't count towards the world record. Although I didn't take a photo of this, as it really is just a twig sticking out of the ground at the moment!

Other shrubs which we planted were little Holly bushes. We planted eight of these most at the end of the garden underneath our conifers, although these are only little too...

We also planted a Hawthorn, which is, again, at the end of the garden. Hopefully, the blossom from this will be a nice sight next spring.

Elsewhere in the garden, there is still a little bit of colour to be seen-but only if you look carefully. Against our fence, near our conservatory, some winter-flowering Jasmines can be seen at the moment. Their bright yellow flowers really make that corner of the garden more colourful every winter. The lilies in our pond have just about finished flowering, so these are just about the last colourful plants left for this year.

One last note- still no birds roosting in our cosy nest box, despite the freezing temperature tonight. Maybe it will take a little longer for the birds to get used to its new location. Maybe the new year will see Blue and Great Tits investigate our nest box ready for spring.