July 2012

Mid winter now though you wouldn't think so from the photos! And peak planting season we reckoned. So we turned our attention to the pony paddock. There was the drive ...

... for which we had lined up some flaxes (about 45), given to us by the very generous gardeners down by the lagoon, on one side ...

... and some natives (about 80) on the other.

These required lots of tree protectors which we managed to source on the internet. We also bought some fertiliser tablets from the same people but somehow ended up with 5 cartons (5,000 tablets) rather than the 5 packets (500 tablets) we thought we had ordered. We'd better keep planting!

And there was also the main part of the pony paddock, where we were going to plant some borders of tree lucerne.

Fortunately we had some help from Katie and ended up with about 65 planted at the far end and a further 40 near the drive. We hope all this planting will provide some shelter for the lambs when they arrive (or perhaps more realistically in the years ahead).

Then Dave got some more sawdust for the paths on the bramble slope ...

... and we struggled to lift up the pampas grass so we could mulch around them.

And on the bad days, we ticked off another indoor job from the not-so-urgent to-do list - making some bookends for our very aesthetically pleasing but not very practical bookshelves. This involved rather a lot of woodwork for Dave and rather a lot of varnishing for me. But at last the books at each end of each shelf are supported.