11th July 2009

We just couldn't resist an extra visit to the section this weekend.

We arrived early to discover frost - something we do not experience in our current garden. Fortunately the trees did not seem to mind

And even the water in the pond was frozen, what little there was left in it.

But the main purpose of the trip was to try out our new toy. Would it cope with the kikuyu grass, the gorse, the blackberry and the fennel?



Well, it made a pretty good effort and we now have a much larger front lawn and a little bit of back lawn.

Oh yes and we heeled in 12 baby gums, to increase the total to 188 trees.

And we also found a rather lovely sunny sheltered slope, just waiting for a seat and a glass of wine.

5th and 6th July 2009

Two visits this week - it seemed only fair that none of the family should miss out on the fun, so Sunday was Joanna's lucky day, and a chance for her to dig and plant and water.

She decided it would be appropriate to plant a tree for Michael, which was obviously the correct thing to do as the newspaper used to line the hole just happened to contain a large feature on his life and times. In fact the newspaper used on top under the mulch was a further item on our fallen hero as was the paper in the hole for the next tree and the next tree...




Anyway, with Joanna's help, we gained a row of cupressus leylandii which we hope will grow very rapidly to block out our view of the neighbour's house.

We popped back on Monday for a very helpful meeting with 'The Green Gardener' from the local council, who gave us some really exciting ideas for developing our fruit trees and vegie garden.

And we took the opportunity to plant the last few plants that were still waiting for their new homes. At the end of the day, we had run out of trees and run out of newspapers and run out of ties and run out of water.

But we have now planted 176 trees in total and we reckon they look pretty good.

Hopefully they will all grow big and strong, and not get too badly eaten by the rabbits and hares, while we are away for the next few weeks. Watch this space!

1st July 2009

Although we made great advances last week, we had been disappointed not to find water. Dave however was convinced we could do better and spent ages sighting up and down the section and decided the land might be lower on the other side, down the gully. We had only ventured down there on a couple of occasions and had not even established where our section ended, as most of it was a thick mass of blackberry brambles. So he set off on a separate mission, armed with secateurs, cutters and ropes. And he discovered that once you got through the brambles, it opened out into an area of rather nice native bush with some fairly large trees. He came back with a new site in mind and managed to persuade our trusty bore diggers to try again, which they did.

Off down the gully....

where the mass of brambles and gorse opened out into...
some rather nice bush.

A bit tricky for the diggers but they were willing to give it a go.

And yay, we have water!

Just needed a pump to draw it up

It was at about 5 1/2 meters below the surface (and probably about 1 1/2 metres lower than they had reached last week). But when they lowered the sandtrap in, they hit something hard, probably river gravel, so it was very lucky that it was just low enough.

So now in terms of our favourite game 'Squatter', we can have 'Irrigated pasture' and not bother about 'General drought' or 'Local drought'. Just hope we dont land on 'Bore dries up' though!

And the rest of the water they brought could fill up our pond, which was very empty because of all the trees we have planted - 140 at the last count.

Meanwhile back on the surface, Dave was dealing to the gorse bushes with his not yet patented gorse bush remover (which only broke twice)

while I spread some mulch round the last few trees. And yes, you can actually see them from a distance now. Grow little plants grow!