Getting close

The Open Day is getting close and there is still a fair amount of preparation to be done. Fortunately we had a good turnout of helpers today and Ellie, Cathy, Riana and newcomer Paul managed to colour-code almost all of the bags in the nursery so it will be easy to determine prices. We also had pictures of most of the plants in the nursery printed and we stuck that on an old board we had recovered from the aviary.

Now people will be able to see at a glance what the flowering plant looks like. Hopefully we didn’t make too many mistakes, we did the best we can.

After singing their praises last time I was not so happy with the staff this time around. They did not remove the old, unsightly shade cloth from the braai area, nor dig the hole to the water supply as promised and the cleaning up of the rubble left much to be desired. On a positive note though the cause of the cesspool was discovered and remedied by Goodman, all it took was to close a tap which had been left permanently open!

The “real men” were not so keen on painting dots on flower pots so we went and mowed the paths in the arboretum or, in Keith’s case, wielded the chainsaw to good effect on the Strelizia nicolai around the Xhosa huts.

We have looked for years at these offending plants which do not belong in the Reserve and now in less than a day they have all been cut down, what an excellent job!

I had good intentions to install at least part of the shade cloth over the braai area in preparation for next weeks geocaching event but it proved to be quite a bigger job than I thought so I didn’t get further than cutting it to length.

We concluded the day by sprinkling some coffee grinds where the porcupines have been digging again. Don’t know how effective that is because they simply find another tree to munch the roots.

Contrary to popular belief we do take time out every now and then to sniff the flowers, these in particular are beautiful at the moment.