Van Stadens 2014.02.26

Too much happened today to make it into a story so I’ll just list them.

We collected another ten bags of compost at St Albans, this will do for a while. on the way in we met Rob, Keith and Cathy all ready to attack some aliens while we delivered another 1000 planting bags to the Fovs room and some more plants to the shade house.

I proceeded to install another pipe in the greenhouse to water the seed trays on the bottom shelf whilst Ellie busied herself sorting and weeding in the shade house. We were interrupted first by Goodman and then by Tony. The year planner seems to be well received and to motivate them to get their backsides into gear. We already noticed it on arrival with the entrance circle and the verges mown and later I discovered that the fynbos ramble including and some of the cycling tracks were also done.

On top of that the wooden bridges and some of the ranch poles were painted today and in the afternoon one of the staff even cleared more bush by Wesley’s bench and made the path wider.

We also have commitment that the skottle area will be cleared and levelled and the Strelizias removed, hopefully by next week.

After lunch Rob at long last planted his tree. He dug a large hole and mixed the soil with lots of compost. He also ringbarked one of the pine trees and in doing so uncovered an old water pipe so we’ll have to see how difficult it would be to bring water to ‘his’ little forest.

Keith in the meantime cut down the strelizias in and around the traffic circle while Ellie, with some help from Cathy, completed her redesign and composting of the traffic circle.

At 4 pm a friend of Jenny’s arrived with her station wagon full of trees which we duly offloaded into the shade house. We had to make space by cutting down the dead trees and quickly installing some sprinklers there. No shade cloth above them so we will have to see on Sunday how they’ve adapted. She promised to bring some more plants from her farm so our stock is swelling. Also hopefully some people will lend a hand on Sunday to move plants from greenhouse to shade house and from shade house to general area.

Keith found this frog on one of the strelizias.