Alice left after a wonderful few weeks to pursue new opportunities up north and so it was handy that niece Katie fancied a bit of rest and relaxation ... and digging! She planted all the natives I had bought at a recent school fair on the soakfield which is one area that will not need to be constantly watered.
But all the other plants were looking distinctly thirsty and perhaps this led to many of our new fruit trees being attacked by the native bronze beetle. I spent several evenings catching numerous small beetles on the leaves but still the leaves disappeared. Finally I sprayed them with an organic spray and was amazed in the morning to find the trees covered with enormous versions of the insects. Sometimes the whole tree was stripped, like this plum ...
... and sometimes it was just the top leaves above the netting. Either way it was very sad as the trees had looked so healthy.
And after Katie, Paul dropped by and it seemed such a waste not to make use of his muscles so we set him onto the task of edging a bed outside the back of the house before the drive was resurfaced.
Yay, now we just need some pretty shade loving plants.
Meanwhile, the two bald 'Wally's had been growing new feathers and were disappearing into the rest of the group. We received eleven eggs on several days so at least one of them was laying. The whole group seemed quite happy and were learning that scraps and worms were much tastier than mash ...
... but we soon discovered that they didn't always know this as the bed we had planted up on the previous chook dome site was sprouting wheat in a big way!
But with a bit of weeding, it looked respectable again and all the seedlings we had planted were thriving.
On the other side of the veggie patch, the broad beans had just about done their dash and so we stripped them out and managed to collect 3.5 kg of yummy beans.
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