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 own thing cleaning up a strelizia behind the flower house whilst Keith and Cathy got stuck into the rockery in front of the flower house.
After a while Neil and I went to the first circle to cut down one of the large strelizias, while doing that the chain came off and that was the end of chain sawing. We carried on with the handsaws and managed to finish the one strelizia before also tackling the one by the gate. It definitely gave a better idea what to improve around the entrance.
When we finished we quickly went to the arboretum to take all the old chicken wire to the road, let’s see if the staff will clean it up.
On return the rest of the crew had just gone to tea so we joined them and Ellie made use of it to have an impromptu meeting, discussing Wessa, cycle tracks and various other issues.
Afterwards most of us still paid a visit to the arboretum to look at the flowering Sterculia and what else we had done, especially with ‘The Gem’ Don’t know if it was the bleak weather or the wintry look of the vegetation but there was little enthusiasm, especially Michelle was less than impressed with the whole setup. Makes one think if it is all worth it.
Lastly we still had a look by the entrance in spite of the biting wind and ideas were bounced around such as making the rockeries more horse-shoe shaped and putting gabions by the gate. We’ll discuss it with Goodman when we next see him.
When all had left Ellie and I returned to the arboretum to unearth the next leak which we found right in front of the nookie and we decided that we would make this the end of our pipe fixing quest. From here we will lead a smaller pipe to a tap by the nookie so we’ll have water by ‘The Gem’. When we left Rob and Jenny were still out in the forest nailing more name tags to the trees.