Hot summer – trees alive?

Simon called in on his way east to get our modem and rain gauge working and reported that the plantings are looking very healthy. We know it’s been a hot summer so we looked at the temperature and rain records from a farm nearby:

This shows that indeed this has been one of the hottest summers in the last 20 years (red line, and the thick blue is the average over this period).

There has been some rain in the area this summer and we are a little below the average, so hopefully last years seedlings have been surviving.

Here are some of Simon’s photos of our first year’s plantings, now in the ground for over 18 months: