25th November 2009

Back again to watch the final touches being put to the drive, and still full on action both for Mark ....


...and the local birds, still making the most of the freshly turned soil.

The two piles of dirt were easily lost on the slope, which now looks smoother than before.

And we also discovered a new use for the gorse remover - it proved very handy for extracting the mower from a tricky position.

Despite this little hiccup, we managed to mow a new section of the slope for the first time and use the cuttings to remulch all the trees. The trees are looking much better these days although one of the gums that was transplanted has since died and many of the gums have rather a lot of uninvited residents.

24th November 2009

We had missed our weekly visit for the past two weeks but that did not mean no progress was taking place. We arrived up at our new section a day early this week, just in time to check out....

the new drive. We werent sure when we arrived, it looked a bit straighter than we had expected.

but as we walked up it, it looked rather nice.

And action was certainly the word of the day, as Mark on the digger ...

and the compacter...

had the help of two trucks and their drivers and no sooner had he prepared one stretch, the next load of road metal from the local quarry arrived.

And the next truck arrived almost before he had spread it, just to keep the pressure on. At one stage, the three of them were all working at once, in their various toys.

And then there was the job of redistributing all the soil that had been scraped off, which had formed two enormous piles but was put to use modifying a steep slope.

And at the end of the day it looked rather good. Just a bit more topsoil to rearrange and a final roll for the drive required tomorrow.

The local birds seemed to relish this work and we had plovers, herons and skylarks popping in for lunch. And although it has been unseasonably cold recently, this was not snow but rain on a patch of flowering grasses.

And we have at last submitted the plans to the local council and we think we have found a builder. So yays all round.

4th November 2009

Some more mathematics this week.... If it takes one man about 10 seconds to plant a subdivided flax plant, how long will it take him to plant the missing 23 from the vegie patch border? The answer turned out to be about three hours, as he found a gorse bush in or near almost all the intended spots.

Never mind, at least he has a tool for the job, with his own should-be-patented gorse-puller. You just expose the root...

attach the rope...

and heave ho....
simple as that!

Quite impressive tap roots though, todays winner was...

Meanwhile, the neighbours had obviously enjoyed their lunch last week and came back for some more.

And the grass around the natives clearly needed some attention...



and looked the much better for it.

28th October 2009

It was to a particularly long visit this week as it started with a trip to the Botanic Gardens to scavenge for some tulip bulbs which were no longer wanted. This was a very productive trip and we now have about 50 red flowering bulbs to go with the orange, yellow and white, and pink flowering tulips I collected there in the past 2 weeks. Thank you, City Council.

And at last the flowering cherry trees had been delivered to friends nearby - some bargain 'last year's trees' bought on the internet and when we went to collect them, we discovered they were much bigger than expected and covered in unripe cherries which the birds should enjoy.

And then a neighbour dropped in for lunch and seemed delighted with our apple cores.

We had also bought some lilac trees on our travels last weekend, so we had 6 new trees to plant - 4 for the shelter belt behind our future orchard ....


... and two flowering cherries to look at from our future living room.

The 93-for-the-price-of-none flaxes that we had planted a couple of weeks ago looked decidedly sad and would have been even more so when they discovered they were about to be moved again. We realised we had overlooked an important part of our permaculture veggie patch design and needed to move almost half and find a further 20 plants. The plants now form a circle with 6 subcircle bulges sticking out and will hopefully act as a windbreak and a barrier to the creeping grass outside.

But another afternoon with the mower provided sufficient mulch for all the new and moved plants which also received some much needed water. Lets hope for some warm weather so that they can grow big and strong.

21st October 2009

More planting was on the agenda this week. We went back and bought the 3 alders that we had intended to buy last week, which will form the basis of the shelterbelt for our fruit trees. We also transplanted two syringas that had struggled for years in our old garden in the wind and the salt spray. We hope they will enjoy life better in our new section.

We had also ordered some budget flowering cherries on the internet, but they did not turn up. Fingers crossed they will arrive soon.



And at last we had got round to preparing some homemade hare repellent, which we applied to the new alders...

and to what was left of some of the tastier-to-hares natives. Even the worst attacked do now have a few new leaves so there is hope yet.

And we did discover that, although the gums are making rapid progress, they are being outpaced by the lupins, which are making quite a nice windbreak and fixing the nitrogen in the soil for us too.

14 October 2009

Dreadful weather had been forecast, lots of wet, heavy at times and thunder later, but we hoped they had got it wrong as it started out OK.....

And we were very lucky when we went to a local nursery to buy a couple of trees and some flax and toe toe as we found that some enormous overgrown plants of both the last two were on special, so we decided to forget about the trees and fill the car up with the grasses. They looked so enormous in the shop (and the car) but somehow, when we got them to our new section, they did not seem so impressive.

Anyway, planting them was a job for the afternoon, first we had to install the new polythene catchment for our pond. This all went smoothly and was to be severely tested later on...
As you can see, mark II was to be shorter, fatter and hopefully stronger...

Then we added a final few flaxes to our vegie patch shelterbelt - 93 in total now, having come from 4 parent plants. Pretty good eh!

And then the rain came!!! By far the hardest we have experienced up there, and we both got completely soaked. Note to self, should put on waterproof clothes and boots as soon as the rain starts!

Anyway, we pressed on with planting the 16 new potentially enormous flaxes and toe toes, heartened by the fact that we would not need to water them. And we made it just about, but by then the weather was too bad to record our efforts for posterity. Watch this space.

7th October 2009

It had been so cold and wet, with horrendous southerlies for the last few days, that we nearly decided not to go to our new section this week. But again, as last week, the weather got better the closer we got and by the time we arrived it was beautifully sunny if still rather chilly. And there was snow on the nearby hills - amazing for this time of year!!

We had plenty to do - first, a man came about putting in a drive. Yay, now that would be progress.

Then we marked out the circle that should become our permaculture-based veggie patch and started to plant an outer border.


(note the snow in the background)

We are using some more refugee flax plants for the border and hope they will provide shelter from the wind as well as being a barrier to keep out the kikuyu grass and other unwanted plants.

This week we brought up 4 plants and managed to divide them into 71 new plants. Amazing! They were quite overgrown and tatty but they looked really healthy once they had been split up, cut back and all the old leaves removed.



And finally Dave cut the grass that been under the slippy slide where we were collecting water. Unfortunately the plastic has been damaged in the sun and needs to be replaced. I am not certain under which Health and Safety requirements our trusty old lawn mower falls, but I dont think it complies!!