The year is truly underway again and we are back to the Wednesday routine.
While the hacking team of Rob and Cathy did their pre-tea hakea and other nasties clearing and discussing the new alien which is not an alien, the Widdringtonia nodiflora, I got stuck into weeding the shade house while Ellie went to the braai area to give the log benches and table a good coat of clear varnish.
Though most of the plants in the shade house are doing well you couldn’t see them because the weeds were doing even better, especially the deep-rooted grasses. It looks like there has been an overdose of watering which makes it easier to pull out weeds but not so good for plants like Agapanthus and Clivia which rot quite easily.
Before tea there was still time for Ellie to scrub the picnic tables on the main picnic area, chop new growth off the blue gum stumps and pull out some seedlings.
After tea Ellie and Cathy got busy weeding the Aloe Koppie which was rather overgrown while Rob planed the door of the FOVS room before coming to help me with the weeding. We don’t really like to use poison but it looks like we have to do something to discourage some insects from chomping the leaves of our precious plants.
After lunch we felt like doing something different so we closed up the remaining open patch in the roof of the shade house with shade cloth and did some fiddling in the greenhouse.
After R&C had left Ellie varnished the picnic tables she had scrubbed while I continued weeding and finally replaced some putty around a window in the Fovs room.
With some some of the staff spending most of the day chatting in the planting shed and Working for Water team playing cricket even though Neil has been promised that dead trees would be cleared and pines along the River Walk be hacked one wonders about the way forward. Hopefully the tractor will be back next week and some mowing of trails and tracks can be done.