Greetings, fellow gardeners and eco-friendly creatures :)

As some of you know, in the last years I prefer to live as close to Nature as possible and live a minimalistic life, of course, once again, as much as our modern world allows that.

With this post I will share my observations and my garden history and experience, summarized for the year 2023. Well, the year isn't quite over yet, but with frost making home here in the Northern Hemisphere and the negative temperatures around the corner, apart from some winter preparations, there isn't much to do outside in the garden.

2023 has been quite a dramatic year. The weather, in general, was not a match to any previous year, at least from my first-person-observations. Extremely hot days, followed by rainstorms and windstorms, heavy floodings in some unusual parts of the country.

I can't tell if there is a cycle in the weather "events" but all around here, trees that have been planted 10-15 years ago, are... dying. Last year, our cherry tree and apricot tree passed away and the half of our pair tree was dry too. This year, our peach dyed and the pear tree went completely dry too, unfortunately.

The walnut trees we planted about 3 years ago grow nicely, I think they doubled in size this year. I suppose they have good roots already, as I almost haven't watered them, apart form the hottest summer days. Leaves are about to fall soon, so here is a shot I took today :)

I'd say, the climate changes and how they affected the plants in the area are probably 50%, if not more, caused by human activity around. There were two acid rains this year, bringing down the tree blossoms. One of our apple trees that gave tens of kilograms of fruits last year had matured only two fruits. The other one has no apples at all! The second acid rain killed the grapes.

One morning I woke up to see how woodpeckers had peeled off the peach tree that I already suspected dead:

From my humble observations, the major reason for all that tree death is the reduced amount of underground water. I could definitely tell that by the volume of water I could use from our water well. Probably a half from what I was extracting last year. The change was, I guess, too rapid to let the trees adapt.

So, here logically comes the decision to buy and plant new trees!

I know from my grandfather that the best time to plant new trees is in the late autumn, a week of two before the frosts. Thus, the trees have plenty of time to adapt and slowly wake up in the spring. Also, with a rainy autumn, their is virtually no need to water them, after the first few days.

So, after some research and trying to have different trees, with eatable fruits, I ordered five new trees, each 2 years old.

• two chestnut trees
• one pomegranate tree
• one cornel-tree
• one medlar-tree

This is what I paid for them:

23 EUR isn't bad for 5 trees, right? This amount also includes the courier fee of about 4 EUR ;)

Ah, I forgot to mention that late autumn is perfect for buying trees as the garden-centers are trying to sell as much as possible before the winter hits, so actually 4 of the 5 trees were at 50% discount. Just for comparison, our two-person weekly grocery shopping is about 50-100 EUR so those 5 trees are a solid and wonderful investment, right? I really hope they all survive the winter and adapt to our soil.

The first watering of the pomegranate tree after planting.

In the upper left-corner you may notice the green leaves of the saffron (I wrote about it last year) ;)

The first watering of the cornel-tree:

I really love the sweetness of the medlar fruits so I hope I live long enough to taste those born from the tree I planted :) This is how a two-years-old sapling looks like:

The compost we produce ourselves, let me just mention, a big plastic composter was the only governmental aid we received since the start of the covid pandemic. Don't be surprised though, this is Bulgaria, the wild-wild-East!

And last, but not least, the chestnut-trees :)

I hope this is useful or informative, or at least entertaining to those who take the time to read this ;) Please send a good thought/pray/vibe so these trees adapt and survive the dramatism of our cotemporary times!

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Garden snaps taken with my Sony mobile phone, thanks for the high quality product, Sony! :)

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Have a great day!

Here is an uncomplete list of some of my equipment I use on a regular basis:

Cameras	Canon EOS 5D Mark III
	Canon EOS M5
	Canon EOS 550D
Lenses	Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM
	Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM
	Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM
	Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
	Canon EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM
	Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM
	Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
	7artisans 35mm f/1.2
Strobes	Dynaphos Speedster
Flashes	Metz
Tripods and Mono-pods	Manfrotto
	Benro

The divider I use in my posts I have created in Adobe Express.