Day 6: It is mild today, but I don’t think by any stretch could Canadians call this spring. Yet fruit and rose nurseries are selling out lightning fast. One day my computer click for a coveted cherry lands in my “shopping cart”, by the next I must wait until 2019 for another shot at it. For a full forty-eight hours, I was bereft of all prunus cerasus, then discovered Whiffletree Farm and Nursery (.ca), half way up the road in Elora. I’ve immersed myself in the sharp deadlined education about VVA1s, Krymsk 86s, Lovell or Myrobalans vs. St. Julian or B118s. All roots. Is this a foreign language to you? It means everything to the tree choice and its likelihood of drought or winter survival, its height and production, it’s ability to come to grips with rocky soil, or being espaliered. 
Here below is my first stab at a cloister fruit garden plan, for my thirty-three distinctly European fruits on order. This plan gelled as I took my family turn to keep hospital vigil over my 100 year old mother-in-law recovering from pneumonia in the dark hours. There is no place flat on this land: gradients may defeat the dream, and labour conservation will determine choices for path and quadrant materials. But I am aiming for an elaboration on the ancient Islamic (Achaemenid, Persian) and French models approaching a traditional Paradise Garden.
The devil is in the details still to come.
Thyme will surround planting holes. It may not remain this sparse. It will look pathetic and rough for years. I know it will look its best well past my lifetime, perhaps in a hundred years.
But I hope it will provide a brief paradise, for someone.
Happy Family Day
Garden Canada 