Van Stadens 2013.03.27

Strange weather today, not all that hot in the morning but very humid and in the afternoon extremely hot and not humid at all.

The aim was to plant our sign, first collected some rocks to put around the pole to prevent our keen friend with the tractor to mow our sign to oblivion, then dug a hole, mixed some concrete and that was that, perhaps we will get a few more walkers through the arboretum. We will keep an eye out for an increase in litter.

We also tried out the new connection to the tap, still not happy, too leaky so back to the drawing board. I hung the spray in a tree and the birds loved it.

Of course we also had to play a bit and for no reason made a connection to the rest of the old irrigation system and concreted a leak a bit further on. We’ll switch it on next week and see where the next gusher will be.

Went early to lunch to collect the remaining cycads in the nursery, all 17 of them, shook the soil off them in the shade house and after lunch planted them in the cycad section of the arboretum. It is great to be able now to get a hosepipe there so we could water our plantlings, hopefully they’ll take and then we’ll have more than 30 cycads there.

Lastly we carried the pick and a pole 1km down the River Walk to plant the first of our distance markers. It was boiling hot between the proteas and even after such a short walk we were quite dehydrated so the cup of coffee back at the FOVS room was most welcome.

On the way out a quick check in the flower house showed that our pamphlets must be quite popular, again there were none left. The new labels there look good but the jury is still out whether the staff will make it work.