Van Stadens

In our efforts to find out the names of some of the plants in the reserve we made these collages and sent them to the experts. Senecio ruwenzoriensis Osteospermum polygaloides and we also wanted to find out the difference between the Widdringtonias. Amazing how much scope there still is to discover plants.

We carried on with the irrigation pipes in the arboretum to make life a little easier when watering the trees, just trying to keep on top of things. Later we worked in the nursery, mainly weeding and discovered these lovely Brunsvigias in one of the beds behind the misting house. We will keep an eye

We fooled ourselves into thinking that today would be a relaxing day as there wasn’t much on our to-do list which had been in any case left at home. By now we should know better. As Ellie had arranged for the ride-on mower to be fetched for service one of us had to stay behind

We may be overdoing it with the work parties judging by the bad turnouts but there is just so much to do. There may be light at the end of the tunnel as the cases of corruption and self-enrichment have been discovered in the municipality and one of the outcomes is that Goodman now has

We couldn’t wait to attach the hose connection and test last week plumbing and we were pleased with the outcome. For some reason the water pressure has been excellent lately and we had quite an impressive fountain. It took a bit of effort to collect some rocks to make it a bit more porcupine proof

Full program today and on top of that we also had a phone call they would deliver the new benches so instead of our usual first delivery to the nursery we went straight to the arboretum to prepare for the installation of the water pipe. This went well so we were back at the nursery

I haven’t blogged the past few times we’ve been to VS because it tends to become repetitive but, as this is a record what we do, I need at least try to keep it up. Our focus has been two-pronged lately, the nursery and the arboretum and both show steady progress. In the nursery you

We were away camping which of course does not mean that work comes to a standstill as our hacking team kept up their sterling work and also inspected the new game fence which has sprung up along the north-east border of the reserve. Many unanswered questions here. We hear rumours that buffalo will be bred

Ellie’s posting to Facebook, I can’t say it any better: A HUGE thank you to the 8 people that came to our monthly meeting! Although all of us were the core group.Though in the arboretum, we got 7 big burned trees taken down and cut into pieces. A lot of alien trees cut and poisoned,

Today can be summarized in one sentence, plumbing, weeding, planting and talking. We hadn’t seen the staff for a while so Ellie needed some catching up with the happenings at the reserve. We were impressed that the new garden at the parking area was nicely weeded, the grass in and around the nursery was impeccably