Van Stadens

After Sunday’s relaxing time trying out the cycle tracks and picnic for fathers day it was back to the grindstone today. Started off with some corner post supports in the Gem, some bee killing, removal of more wire mesh and broken pipe moving on to cleaning up last weeks logs and branches of the Widdringtonia. […]

Some great surprises today, as we entered the reserve we noticed that a lot of the proteas and ericas on the left had been cut down. Obviously Goodman has decided that this was better than taking a chance with a deliberate fire. There are a lot of seedlings coming up already so soon it will

This was an our monthly meeting, announced as a gardening exercise. Better turnout than usual with Keith and Cathy, Michelle and Rasheed joining us. The plan was to weed in Jenny’s circle, it took a while to get everyone in gear. Neil got going with the chainsaw to trim some smaller strelizias, Susan did her

Needed to be a bit earlier today as Jenny’s helper was working for us today. It didn’t quite work out that way as Jenny’s meeting only started at ten and she needed him till then. I had to prepare the brush cutter anyway and then it turned out that the new blade didn’t fit so

No pics today, too busy for that. The day started of with a meeting with Goodman, mainly to get permission for the biking trails which he was quite happy with and to meet the new students. It remains to be seen whether the students will be a help or will take up even more of

Been a bit slack lately, I think I missed the last three trips, two of those were walks and only one was a ‘work in the arboretum’ Wednesday. It was Rob’s first day this year that he employed two helpers to remove Podalyrias which have resprouted and he needed the broad pick so the first

Unseasonal, that’s the best word to describe the weather today. The heat got a bit unbearable at times and we did our best to stay out of the sun. First thing we did was to check the pond, still full so all leaks were fixed and some buck spoor around it so we were happy

Quite unusual today as we had no set plan of action, usually we know what we want to achieve on a particular day. On the way we got a mayday call from Jenny as both her an Rob did not have keys to the room so it was important that we opened up. This prompted

Cold and raining today, autumn is definitely here. We were in two minds whether to go or not but windguru showed that the rain would taper off so I thought it would be a good opportunity to retrieve a piece of old water pipe from Gibson\\\\\\\’s farm. On arrival Ellie went to see Goodman with

Busy busy today, not even time for pictures so a quick summary of what got done is in order. On arrival Ellie noticed Goodman was in his office so she gate-crashed a meeting he had there with Tony and another to discuss a few things such as the cross, the arboretum, the specimen tags etc.