HAVING SOME WINTER MISERY WHILE PREPARING MY LARCH (XL) FOR A SHOW.

Hi, everybody,
I woke up really happy this morning realizing that I had won just as many Tour the Frances as Lance Armstrong!

Just one more day before I will take off to the Noelanders Trophy in Belgium to bring in my Larch named XL! The last 5 days were spent trying to slowly defrost XL, he and the rest of my trees were all frozen solid during the surprise attack from King Winter! Although almost all of my trees were in their winter shelter, noting could protect them from 2 nights with temperatures well below – 10 Degrees in my garden! To defrost them I had to place heating in the winter shelter, hoping that it would be enough to slowly defrost them without doing any harm! Bringing my Larch frozen or even half frozen into the show is no option, the temperature in this venue will become real high from all the people that will visit it and that could be really harmful! And the melting water that would drip out of the pot could destroy my table as well! That’s the problem with midwinter shows, the difference in temperatures could be really harmful to our trees! During this show, it is quite common to see flowers and buts starting to open way before their time! So this afternoon I will remove all the snow from the entrance of my winter shelter, that was left there as insulation, to see if my Larch is defrosted, fingers crossed! Another nasty side effects from this freezing weather are that my student Ed and I had planned to load XL into my car later this afternoon so that we did not have to do this early tomorrow when it is still dark outside! But I cant leave XL overnight in my car because it will completely freeze over again! So this now means that poor Ed needs to come to my house at 5 o’clock on the Saturday morning to help me load this big tree into my car, in the dark and ankle deep in the snow over a very slippery path! The things we have to do for our hobby! Wish me luck and I will post pictures and stuff as soon as I get back from Belgium!
Below: Some pictures of the trees that are still outside my winter shelter.