Last week I organized a new V-belt for the ride on mower, left it in the office on Sunday and sent a whatsapp to Samantha with the tongue in cheek message that I expected the nursery to be mown by Wednesday and on arrival we were treated to a sight we haven’t often seen. Mown […]

Our monthly meeting exploring the back of Ladyslipper to see what had come up after the fire was not very popular, only six people took part. I stayed behind to clear some of the outstanding items off my to-do list, just Wednesdays just isn’t enough as the handyman work just piles up. The walk turned

At the moment it is heads down getting the nursery in order and propagating/potting stuff so there isn’t anything interesting to blog about our activities on Wednesdays. I noticed that our weather station had stopped communicating with the internet and that bugged me so much that we just had to go out yesterday to find

It was a whirlwind of activities today with the main focus getting the nursery back in shape again after the sale. Of course the other chores do not stop so Rob and Cathy attended to this month’s section of the hacking program while Jenny looked after the trees in the Arboretum. In quick succession these

The alarm went off rather early to be at Van Stadens in time to do all the usual things such as putting the tables out, banners up, organizing stalls etc. First off were the runners, there were about 120 of them and the comments afterwards were very positive. Perhaps the ideal weather after a week

Tomorrow is the big day and now is the time for the cut flowers. We went to the mountain to collect some P. cynaroides but the flowering season is late this year and there was also some evidence that illegal picking has taken place. We still managed to get a nice variety of of Leucodendrons

Our monthly meeting was totally focused on the preparation for the Open Day and thanks to the excellent turnout and everybody pitching in by teatime all plants were sorted, dots were painted, name signs put in their places etc. For a while we have been concerned about plants disappearing so as a deterrent we put

A subject you’ll see many times until the Open Day is done and dusted. The preparations have been going on for a bit and now they have started in earnest by getting stuck in at the nursery with sorting and weeding and spotting. In the meantime we are still bringing in plants from home and

It was tempting to postpone our weekly Wednesday workday to the next day as bergwinds with temperatures of over 36 were forecast but there were too many things to attend to. First of all our weather station had stopped communicating since our last visit on Friday and, believe it or not, it was our kettle

One of the issues for the Friends of Van Stadens is that we get very little feedback about the usefulness of the various things we do at the Reserve, be it laying on a trail, putting up a bench, clearing aliens etc. Therefore it was very good to see on the hiking club’s Facebook page