spring jobs

With the many tree falls over fences we were kept quite busy. Mostly with aged and rotten silver wattles that fell down in big winds.

We installed the tank to catch overflow from the current tank. If only i had more photos of the method we used to get it up the hill. It was tied onto a triangular sled made from a couple of saplings, with a little jockey wheel at the apex. this was all tied to the back of a 4 wheel drive and it worked amazingly well. After a lot of thought and angst about how we were to get it up the hill, it was in the end very easy.

Spring Orchids were out - A wee Chiloglottis....



And is was just generally very pretty weather.

And how are they growing?

Well pretty good as it turns out. All the trees and berries had sprouted and put on significant growth. Some of the rasberries had flowered and blue berries as well. A couple of chestnut trees had failed to sprout but possibly might still have a go.

There seemed to be some damage from slugs or snails and some leaf sowing caterpillars on the pome fruits. hopefully the little birds will come in and take care of them. Speaking of snails though - i was shocked to discover them all over the established lemon tree - right up to the highest branches. One day they'll be a good supplement for the ducks or maybe the families diet if i work out how to clean and cook them.

The mulching worked well with some clear evidence also that water had been channelled into my contours that fed into the fruit tree holes. There had not been much growth between the fruit trees where the soil had been scraped back, which is not so bad at the moment but will need to be rectified eventually to return life to the soil.

So many trees had fallen down that with the weeding (which had me walking 18km and a back pack) and the trees there was not much time but to look at the orchard and confrim that nothing disasterous was happening.