Heatwave

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 tripping the earth leakage rather than some programming bug. Perhaps we should go solar at some stage.

As we arrived Rob told us that there was some problem with the water supply as the sprinkler had only run for a short while. Our first reaction was “not again!” but a simple check with thumb on tap revealed that the pressure was very low. Jenny had also arrived to water the trees in arboretum, it is by now quite a job with all the newly planted trees especially with hosepipes and low pressure.

I preferred to do some weeding in the shade while Ellie went on a hike along the pipeline to see if she could find anything and, sure enough, she found quite a fountain on Neville’s property where the pipe had been gnawed through by what only could have been a porcupine.

The only positives were that it provided some welcome relief from the heat and it made a nice rainbow.

We decided to try the repair only when Jenny had finished so after lunch we trekked back armed with the necessary tools and a join. By now it has become routine and it was fixed in no time.

In between Ellie and Rob cut down some undesirables on the islands in the Tilapia dam where the trees need some breathing space and they also found that one of the Cyclopia seeds has germinated and already half a meter tall. On wading back they also saw a large Tilapia so some are not only surviving but thriving.

We have found that quite a few people have driven into the Arboretum which is not too good for the things we’ve planted so we have made it a little more difficult by putting a wire across the entrance.

Back in the nursery we put on the sprinklers again to give everything a good soaking and survived the temperature dropping from 37 to 20 degrees within half an hour, quite extraordinary.

To top it all off, on the way home we had a flat trailer tire with hardly any load, lucky it wasn\’t on Friday when we carried the big roll.