rudi

Fire!

Well well, we were most pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the Reserve and found everybody getting prepared for a controlled burn. Never mind that it was a different area than the plan put out earlier this year bur firebreaks were cut and soon the fires were lit. Note the keurbooms in the background, it […]

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Nymph trail marking

Over the past few weeks we had prepared some logs to attach the trail markers to and today we set out to place them at the appropriate places along the Nymph trail. Hopefully we won’t have a fire too soon and, if it would be a controlled fire, we live in hope that the markers

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Chainsaw overtime

2015.05.06 It was a milestone today with the last of the trees on the main picnic site having its branches removed. Slowly but surely we are winning   The trunk serves as a good separation between the rest of the picnic area and the Xhosa ruins so we may leave it there for kids to

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Walking and talking

The U3A (University of the third age) came for a visit today so Ellie took them for a walk to the Arboretum and back as their walking stamina was not quite up to scratch for more strenuous activities. They were very interested in what we all do in the reserve and learned amongst other things

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Work and pleasure

As the monthly meeting is our only opportunity to get work out of people who cannot make it to our Wednesdays we decided to change the walk up Ladyslipper to rather get some order into the nursery, have early tea and then go and explore part of the forest on the western side of the

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Deserted

Well, the reserve was deserted today, no staff in sight. Could payday have something to do with it? The alternative management team (read FOVS) went into full swing anyway and the alien removal team got busy in the vicinity of the Bridge Lookout site and hacked patches of Australian Myrtle and also Hakea while the

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The log bench

As I was not completely satisfied with the first log bench I made for the braai area I had a go at making another one and I must say I am happier with this one. Apparently Goodman was too as he gave it the thumbs up. We ended up having an impromptu meeting about various

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Proof at last

After speculating about the various spoor shown in the previous post Rob caught a mug shot of a water mongoose on the camera so now we have proof of the source of at least some of the tracks. Well done! Today the Van Stadens Forum meeting was held at the Reserve. This is always a

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Entrance circle

2015.05.05 Our monthly meeting and a good opportunity to do something about the overgrown entrance circle and also to finish off the edging of the west bank. We had our usual small group of volunteers when there is work to be done. The advantage of this is that they don’t need much in way of

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All in a days work

One of those days when it was hard to get motived to spend the day helping out at Van Stadens especially when talking to Goodman it was quite clear that his mind was elsewhere and if we want the massive clearing up of the blue gums to be done it is up to ourselves. As

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