Monthly Archives: September 2006

Another warm sunny day in Hawkes Bay. I finished spreading the mulch and started another round of lengthy soaking. I also set the weeping pipe irrigation going for the Yews and for the Australian section – I’m letting these run overnight and will see how well the trickle penetrated tomorrow.

I tidied and binned and took car to the carwash – did you know that these days there’s a fragrance dispenser at the car wash and you can impregnate your car carpets with cherry, pineola or “new car” fragrance. Erk!

Karola returned home from UK this evening – delays and missed connections meant she arrived in Napier at 8:00pm instead of 4:30pm.

Bicka was ecstatic.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—21°C; no rain. [79.4]

Gerald finished painting the two gates.

Had another go at sealing off the white plastic irrigation main leak using some sealant designed to adhere wet surfaces.

I spread mulch on the Ngaios. Well first I made over 60 trips carting Fergie bucketloads along the line. Then I spread the mulch manually (rake and shovel), completing 2/3rds of them before dark.

Bicka had a shower, which she seems to quite like, in preparation for her mistress’ return tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—22°C; no rain. [79.4]

Gerald came and continued painting. It drizzled on and off erratically all day.

I finished the watering (soaking) of the Ngaios by lunchtime. Also went shopping with Bicka and:

• Dug up and removed the 3 concrete posts that were put in by Colin Nagel many years ago to hold up Wysteria vines round the outside of the sun porch.
• Mowed Bicka’s pen
• 90 minutes chopping thistles in the Middle paddock – 2/3 done
• hung a pair of small gates in the temporary sheep yards – as suggested by Bruce Richardson (Mobile Shearing) to make getting the sheep up onto the shearing platform much easier.
• collected and disposed of haybale twine and sheep dags making the place unsightly .

The final 2 loads of mulch arrived today – $240.00 for the 4 loads. Didn’t get round to spreading any of it today, possibly tomorrow. I’ve also ordered another 2 truckloads for the Grisolinea in the south-east corner – they’re doing quite well but the competition from weeds has started. Stu (06-870-1255 – Bay Stump and Branch Chipping) will bring the mulch early next week.

Found another communal bantam nest with 11 eggs – no hen in attendance and quite cold but non of them floated so I’m feeding them to Bicka – hope she gets a nice glossy coat.

I paced out the lengths of the eastern and western sections of the orchard driveway 4 metre planting area – well if you include the single row of Ngaios on the driveway side of the fence it’s really 6 metres wide. The eastern end, the end that goes from the orchard entrance up to Karola’s entranceway towards the Homestead, is about 75 metres long. The other piece from Karola’s entrance up to the end of the fence – at present the fence stops just before the area where we cut down the Braeburns this year – is about 60 metres. Weeping pipe comes in 30 metre and 15 metre lengths; if we decide to install weeping pipe it’d probably need two pipes along the length, each pipe running between two rows of trees.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—19°C; 5mm rain. [79.8]

Gerald didn’t come today as it was too wet.

I fixed the catch on the old wooden gate which now swings in the opposite direction.

More watering.

90 minutes chopping thistles in the Island paddock and what’s left of the Top paddock; I also collected all the yellow twine from hay bales fed out over winter.

In the afternoon I went to Titoki Nursery in Riverbend Rd, Napier and managed to get their last PB2/3 Ngaios. I had 18 holes for Ngaios unfilled when I ran out of the 120 we’d bought earlier. With 42 of those dead it meant rather fewer available to plant than we’d expected. Titoki Nursery had exactly 18 Ngaios to sell me. Afterwards I went to Haumoana, to the Genesis reforestation project, and bought 20 more Karamu trees to be stored until Karola returns and used as fillers if any more Karamus die.

As dusk fell I planted the 18 Ngaios in a light drizzle.

The 2nd load of mulch arrived; 2 more to come – this is for the Ngaios.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—14°C; southerly wind turned to northerly in the afternoon; 7mm rain. [80.2]

Gerald continued painting the 2 gates, carefully scraping off the rust with a wire brush.

Campbell and I rehung the old wooden gate under the Lime tree – made it swing out of the paddock instead of into it, thereby taking advantage of the natural fall of the land and making the gate swing about 50mm higher off the ground. This was successful.

We then sprayed the flax in the Australian section with Conqueror oil to combat some quite serious scale infestations.

Using the Fergie we dug holes and planted 77 Ngaios – the ones we’ve been storing under the Camelias for several weeks. Over 40 of them had died – mainly due to frost I think – but 77 were lively enough to be worth planting out. They go in a single line about 0.5 metres out from the fence on the driveways side of the fence separating the orchard drive from the new grass paddock to the north of the Homestead. We need about another 20 to complete the row up to the end of the current drive-side fence. Campbell sprayed all the Ngaios with Stress Guard; we hope it works.

I’ve started watering the Ngaios and also I’ve ordered another 16 cubic metres of mulch to put around the Ngaios – the 1st trucklaod (4 cubic metres) came this evening.

Campbell returned to Auckland on the 4:30pm flight from Napier.

Mike Croucher mowed the lawns today. Also I note that the grass seed I put on the areas filled with earth from the heap by the garage have sprouted.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—21°C; no rain. [80.2]

Gerald came early morning and continued painting the pair of old metal farm gates – the ones with square rails.

Campbell and I went shopping – got some Conqueror oil for treating scale on Karola’s flax and some Stress Guard which claims to slow down transpiration and thereby reduce stress for transplanted trees.

We spent most of the day distributing the 16 cubic metres of mulch over the 4-metre wide planting area along the orchard drive. The 4 piles of 4 cubic metres of mulch almost covered the full length – missed by about 5 metres. We had to find 3 Fergie bucketloads from under the Eucalypts to just finish off.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—21°C; no rain. [79.8]

Picked up Campbell from Napier airport at 8:30am.

We finished putting mulch on the Australian section.

We replanted a further 13 Karamu trees in the Karamu/Lemonwood natives border to the north along the orchard drive, replacing dead root trainer Karamus.

We began adding the purchased 16 cubic metres of mulch to that area, complementing an estimated 24 cubic metres we’ve already spread.

A swarm of bees temporarily occupied their old haunts in the upstairs outer wall of the Homestead – the wall of the Bee Room. Couple of hours later the majority were dead (due to a decade old insect poison put in the wall cavity – and still killing bees today) or gone to seek their fortune elsewhere.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—24°C; no rain. [78.8]

Gerald came round in the morning but this time just to clean up the house a little in anticipation of Campbell coming tomorrow.

I laid weepy pipe irrigation along the 50 metre row of Yew trees along the northern roadside boundary and let it run for 4 hours. It seems to work well. I also put mulch on 3/4 of the Australian planting section along the roadside boundary – the wattles and bottlebrushes.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—19°C; northerly breeze; no rain. [79.5]

In the morning Gerald and I finished sawing up the old apple firewood in the big shed, reclaiming about 1/2 a bay.

Using some of the grass seed saved from regrassing the paddock in front of the Homestead I resowed the area around the gateway entrance from the orchard drive towards the Homestead. It was churned up when Alan’s tractors moved the uprooted Royal Gala apple trunks under the Eucalypts in winter. I have already filled the ruts from the heap behind the garage. Watered the regrassed area.

Having last week put heaps of earth onto Karola’s grass bridge, filling the large hollow on the paddock side, today I put couple of large pieces of concrete in the Fergie bucket (for weight) and used it to smooth off the heaps – going backwards so that the bucket levelled the ground rather than digging it up.

The 3rd sitting bantam seems to have over 30 eggs under her. I’m doubtful any of those will hatch and wonder if it was a communal laying effort.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—23°C; no rain. [79.4]

Gerald started painting one of the wrought iron farm gates dark green. He spent a lot of time and care on scrubbing off the worst of the rust with a wire brush. I went shopping for more irrigation bits and pieces – took back a 30m weeping pipe to Mitre-10 as it was $60 compared to $40 at Farmlands. Went to Goldpine and then Tumu Timber and got prices for some more fence posts – to my delight and surprise Tumu were significantly cheaper so I’ve ordered the stuff and it’ll be delivered next week.

Moved the pile of silt, using it on the track from the front drive entrance to the new grass, past the Lime tree.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—23°C; no rain. [79.8]

Gerald and I first went into Hastings and got an extra link put in the chainsaw chain so it’d fit on the replacement bar, then we did a couple of hours more apple firewood; probably 1 or 2 more mornings needed to finish it off.

Computer work most of the day, like yesterday. Talked to Karola in the UK; she’s coming home next week.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—20°C; northwesterly winds; no rain. [79.9]

Laid out, connected up, and tested the 2 x 30m “weepy pipe” hoses to water the Australian section. Seems to work well. Next is to cover the area in mulch, but it was too windy today to make that a good task.

Setting up my chainsaw ready for tomorrow – the new bar is a bit wider but the guy in the shop said with great conviction that it’d fit, being a bit wider wouldn’t matter. When I tried to assemble it this evening the chain wouldn’t fit, was just a smidgen too short. I tried for 20 mins and if there is a knack to it, it eluded me. I’ll have to go first thing tomorrow and see what the shop can do to fix the problem.

I see that Kevin Watkins, councillor and house mover, won top prize for his float at the Hastings Blossom Festival at the weekend – with Camelias and Bamboo from here and several young Chinese ladies on an exchange student trip in the Hawkes Bay.

Henate (is that a christian name or surname?) from EIT came and got some more bamboo to make flutes with.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—19°C; southerly winds; no rain. [79.9]

Gerald and I continued our cutting up of 2005 apple logs in the big shed. We stopped after a couple of hours because the chainsaw bar siezed up – the sprocket at the end tore itself apart.

At the same time I watered the “Australian” section – in 3 pieces because the range of the irrigation sprayer is about 10m – 90 minutes for each of the pieces.

In the afternoon I went searching for Coprosma robusta (Karamu) trees. I tried Greanleaf Nursery in Clive – I’d spoken to the head man on Saturday and he said they had some, however, when he showed them to me today I remarked how the leaves were really very shiny for Karamu – sure enough, he checked, and they were Coprosma repens. So I went to Haumoana and found Genesis Nurseries which does work with schools and for bush regeneration – I bought 20 @ $5.00 each. 7 of these are to replace dead ones in the 4m planting area along the orchard drive; I’ve already replanted 35 of the 42 casualties. The remainder will join the unplanted Ngaios under the Camelias in case we get additional losses over the summer.

While at Greenleaf Nursery I discussed with them whether they could graft cuttings from our existing very old citrus (lemon and orange/grapefruit) onto new stock – they said yes, buy the new tree and they’d graft it for us for about $10.00 – so that’s something to discuss with Karola when she returns at the end of the month. Greenleaf and other nurseries offer fruit trees with multiple varieties on the same tree – quite interesting for those with small gardens I suppose – so you can have Royal Gala, Granny Smith, and Braeburns on the same apple tree for example – that’s what got me thinking about whether we could prolong the life of some of the old fruit trees here by grafting.

While out buying trees I also got a new bar for the chainsaw ($63.48 at Chainsaw Sales & Service), another 30m length of “weeping pipe” ($33.53 at Farmlands – and $57.84 at Mitre-10) and various waterpipe attachments from Mitre 10 and Farmlands. I filled up the Landrover and got another 20 litres of diesel for the Fergie ($130.00).

Once home I planted out the 7 replacement Karamus and watered them.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—17°C; southerly winds; no rain. [79.4]

Finished watering the 4m planting area alongside the orchard drive.

Planted 37 “Australian” trees along the road frontage under the Eucalypts: 20 wattle (10 Acacia sophorae, 10 Acacia dealbata), 17 bottlebrush (7 Callistemon citrinus, 10 Callestimon “Red Cluster”). Added another tap into the irrigation alkathene running along the fence line and attached a 30m “weepy pipe” to it, which just reaches from one end of the “Australian” section to the other. That leaves 3 Callistemon citrinus to find homes for.

Campbell rang; he’s volunteering to come down from Auckland and help with more tree planting – I still have 120 Ngaio trees waiting to go in along the orchard drive so I readily agreed – will pay his flight here and back – he’s now got tickets, arriving Sun 26th 8:30am and leaving Tue 28th 4:25pm.

Pukeko are strolling around in the geese enclosure – not sure the geese really like that.

Three bantams appear to be broody; one is sitting on no eggs in the green shed, another is at the foot of the big oak sitting on 11 eggs, and a 3rd (a white one) is somewhere off in the bushes.

Glorious weather, if a tad breezy.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—17°C; southerly winds; no rain. [79.5]

Planted 35 replacements for dead Coprosma Robusta (Karamu)root trainers in the 4m wide planting area along the orchard drive; 20 Karamu, 15 Lemonwood. I need 7 more – will get another 10 Coprosma Robusta next week, put 3 of them in the natives corner next to the orchard entrance.

Latest score – state of the Coprosma Robusta (Karamu) in the planting strip:

Eastern end
• 32 in good condition
• 10 in very poor condition
• 10 dead

Western end

• 3 in good condition
• 8 in very poor condition
• 32 dead

Johnny Lowry lost control of a ewe and lamb – they got out from his leased grazing at the Ormond-Evenden crossroads – so he drove them into our orchard entrance and from there into the new grass – but without shutting the wooden gate so the animals bolted across and out through that – ended up on the lawn and the ewe elegantly jumped the electric fence and lamb barged through and they joined our flock. So I helped Johnny pen them all up – Johnny caught the big ewe lamb and it bashed his nose so he got a nose bleed. Anyway, his dad came over with a trailer and they sorted things out and took away their delinquent sheep.

Meanwhile, apart from helping pen them up, I carried on with my planting as the southerly gales were drying out the ground and plants. Last night and again today I watered the new trees in their containers. Before planting them out I soaked them in a sheep trough for 20 mins. The holes have slow-release fertiliser granules at the bottom and each plant was heeled in firmly – so this time I hope for a better success rate – they are all PB2-PB6 anyway, all over 12″ tall (400mm).

Gill and Ben flew down to Christchurch today and are now driving back, with a night in Blenheim and a ferry crossing tomorrow lunchtime, in their 9-month old 2nd hand Volvo S60 luxury saloon car.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—18°C; southerly gales; no rain. [?]

60 trees arrived in good condition; they’re in the trailer, watered and joined by the remaining 15 Lemonwoods we haven’t yet planted.

Moved many more Fergie tractor buckets of soil onto the grass bridge, building it up level with the surrounding pasture.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—19°C; no rain. [80.0]

An absolutely beautiful sunny day. Late afternoon I finished hand mowing the geese enclosure and then spread 25kg of lime in the enclosure – my hope is to encourage the growth of palatable grass.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Benchmark:     876-5003

Mitre 10 Mega: 873-8700

Tumu:          878-1999

Smiths Timber: 879-7850

Placemakers:   843-5816

Golden Pine:   879-5580


Prices including GST                      Benchmark      Mitre 10       Tumu           Smiths         Placemakers    GoldPine
                                          ------------   ------------   ------------   ------------   ------------   ------------
MDF 18mm 2400x1200, per sheet ..........                 $44.46         $39.95         $62.88         $49.00
-  seconds or downgrades ...............  $31.94                        $29.95         $42.00-ish
pine 4x2 100x50, per metre .............   $4.12          $4.45          $2.72($4.86)   $2.45          $5.63
-  dressing grade, kiln-dried, gauged        
pine 3x1 75x25, per metre ..............   $2.54          $4.44-$5.13    $2.51          $6.75          $3.55
-  dressing grade, kiln-dried, gauged
square post 100x100 1.8m, each .........   $9.37                         $7.88          $8.57          $9.00          $8.44
-  rough sawn, H3 not necessary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mitre 10 will cut sheets – 1st cut is free, $1 for additional cuts.
Placemakers can cut – no prices available over phone
Benchmark cannot cut, doesn’t have the equipment

Hawkes Bay Weather: 0°C—14°C; no rain. [80.4]

I picked up Gerald at 9:30am and until 12:30pm we cut up apple logs in the big shed – he lopped off the whiskery shoots and I chainsawed into 300mm – 400mm lengths. We got through about 1/3rd of the wood waiting to be processed. This is part of a reorganisation of the big shed, the green shed, the garage, and the wash house.

Big Shed:

• 2 bays are leased out to Alan Ladbrooke, our orchard lessee
• Half the area of the remaining 2 bays is taken up with hay bales and 2005 apple firewood
• Coils of wire, rolls of netting, standards, battens, gates
• (Probably outside the shed) Sheets of corregated iron, concrete and wooden fence posts
• Irrigation pipe, alkathene pipe, PVC pipe (but not garden hose and not irrigation pipe fittings)

Green Shed:

• The Fergie (MF35 – 1962) tractor and the pull-behind motorised mower
• Parts and spares for the Fergie
• Fencing fittings and tools: rammer, spade, shovel, wire and netting strainers, crimpers, fencing pliers, gudgeons, hinges, staples, galvanised nails, etc.
• Electric fencing gear – wires, posts, energisers, etc.
• Fittings for irrigation hose, and coils of garden hose, leaky hose, sprinker tape, and other watering devices
• Garden tools, lawn mowers, wheel barrows, pots, secateurs, loppers, saws
• Seeds and weed killer and lime and blood & bone
• Perches and nesting boxes for the bantams
• Karola’s collection of old metal artifacts found at Karamu

Garage:

• Room for two vehicles
• Car related tools and materials: jacks, pumps, jumpstart leads, battery chargers, tow ropes
• Woodworking tools and household tools
• Fasteners, screws, nails, bolts
• Construction materials that must be kept dry – wood for interior use etc
• Paints and brushes and associated materials
• Oils and Markers and grease and petrol and diesel
• Foodstuff for: dog, cat, chooks, geese, sheep (not hay)

Wash House:

• Intent is to empty it so that it can be moved

MIke Croucher came and mowed the lawns today – grass has been growing fast.

Retail Therapy:

• 1 x Powermid XL U “Long Range Wireless Remote Control Extender” $167.00. This works – it means I can take the Sky satellite TV remote upstairs and switch channels from there – the house TVs are already wired to distribute the Sky signal from the decoder but going downstairs to change channels was inconvenient – no more.
• Small, cheap electric saw bench – for accurate cutting of simple angles – $300.00. I havn’t unpacked it yet.

Dan called from Greenleaf Nurseries near Clive, (06-870-0563). Responding to Karola’s request they have located sources of supply for:

• Taxus baccata (Yew)
• Ilex “Blue Prince” and “Blue Angel”

They are available as 3-year old trees, about 1 metre tall, $14 each.

Jason Lee called from “Hawkes Bay European” (06-870-3415). The car price has dropped from $39,900 to $36,000. Car does not have a factory-fitted alarm, but one can be fitted.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—14°C; southerly wind; no rain. [80.4]

Shopping and a hair cut in the morning after picking up Gerald who says he finds a bit of cleaning much to be preferred over sitting in his council retirement unit in Flaxmere. I went to Harris Machinery for some bits to finish mending the irrigation main pipe. Unfortunately this high pressure pipe is expensive to fix if it cracks or breaks in situ – because the easy cheaper mends need room to push a sleeve onto each side of the break – when terminating an existing pipe for example you can cut a section out giving yourself room to push the sleeve onto the end to be blocked off. An in-situ sleeve is about $100.

Bruce Richardson (Mobile Shearing) was due at 2:00pm – changed his plans and arrived at 12:45pm – he was finished and away by 2:00pm. The 20 ewes each got a 5-in-1 vaccine jab and had their underbellies and cruch shorn – nice and clear and tidy for lambing. Only one of the ewes was really dirty; the rest were remarkably clean given the new grass growth and the rain. Nelson got shorn in interesting places and crutched so he too will feel the wind All 20 ewes were developing nice udders – looks like their all in lamb. Cost: $89.33. I took the opportunity to trim Nelson’s feet – he is heavy but fairly docile once you’ve wrestled him to the ground.

In the afternoon I, armed now with the right size of clip and stopper, closed off 3 of the 4 offshoot pipes. Tomorrow I think I’ll try just melting the plastic along the crackline with the solvent I used previously and see if that works for now. If that works I can stopper the final offshoot pipe and test for leaks.

Just as I was packing up for the day Alan Ladbrooke, our orchardist, had a chat. He’s thought about the irrigation layout and the changes we’ve made by removing 500 apple trees from one area and putting it down to grass while planting 300 or so peach trees where there was grass, and no irrigation, before. There are 4 irrigation zones or blocks in the orchard; irrigation is done a block at a time and we’ve unbalanced the block sizes sizes so that the pressure will be too high in one block and so low it may not even work in another – and of course that’s the block that the peaches naturally hook up to.

So, Alan proposes to do away with the smallest zone, adding those trees to an existing medium-sized zone. He plans to add his peaches into the largest zone and then split that zone in two with a simple manually operated valve (saves getting into rewiring of automatic valves and other complexities). With this proposal:

• The peaches get iririgated and, because the large zone they join is split in two the pressure in both halves will be much better than experienced last year in the single large zone.
• The split zone is managed by a single control in the pump shed and a manual valve is used to switch between the two halves – which is cheap, easy, and quick to install.
• We’ll terminate the irrigation main I’ve been working on back as close to the pump shed as we can; and link up the end of that main to the adjacent zone across the driveway to the big shed – that’ll need about 10 – 12 metres of pipe; Alan has some spare pipe he can use. Of course the water will be flowing in the opposite direction now so we’ll need to cap that off just before it gets to the place where I’ve been sealing off the leaks.
• Alan will hire a little chain digger to make the trenches and it may be a few weeks before it’s all done so my patches to the current system will be a precaution against needing irrigation (for frost control) before he’s finished.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—14°C; no rain. [80.7]

Indoors today doing computer backups – waiting for things to dry up outside.

Did try to mend the irrigation main where it has offshoots leaking from an area now free of trees but the main is en route to watering some of the remaining Royal Gala rows. However:

• The clips and terminators I got were the wrong size; the offshoot pipe changes size less than a metre from where it joins the irrigation main, not a big change but just enough to stop the clips working
• The white 150mm irrigation main itself is cracked at one place – I hope I can fill the crack from the outside rather than cut and replace a section

Nelson grudgingly ate some sheep nuts from my hand again today.

Bicka got muddy wet feet and I dried them off a few times before giving up. Finally she went out and got muddy all over so I gave her another shower and kept her indoors for the evening. Gerald’s cleaning of the polished wooden hall floor was somewhat in vain.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—13°C; 1mm rain. [80.4]

Spent the day completing the conversion of 4 LPs to CD for Campbell – including direct printing a monochrome label with an image and details of the contents. This is done by the CD writer but requires specially coated CDs. The special CDs cost a few cents more and the result is quite professional.

Although the actual temperatures haven’t been particularly low, perhaps because I’ve been sitting down inside all day, it’s felt really cold.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—11°C; southerly wind; 23mm rain. [80.4]

More watering of the orchard rive planting area – then the rain came gently down. Anyway I spent happy hours wrestling with Microsoft Word on my Mac creating a short reprot on the 2nd hand Volvo I looked at for Gill and Ben up here on Friday.

Gerald came for the morning – cleaning the place up a bit.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—16°C; 3mm rain. [80.3]

A gloriously sunny day (again). First I got Gerald from Flaxmere – he’s a pensioner who sometimes house sits for us – and he offered to come and do some hoovering. Then after some Googling to see what questions to ask I went into Hastings and looked at the 2nd hand Volvo S60 T5 automatic saloon car Gill had asked me to investigate.

In the afternoon I mowed more of the geese enclosure; perhaps now, with fewer leaves on the ground and the iris being cut back, more grass will grow. That’s the idea anyway. I also replaced the 3 water trough connections with new ones – just the bit that snaps onto the tap with a short length of garden hose that is then connected to the 20mm alkathene pipe attached to each trough. The garden hose connectors are much easier to handle than ones made for farm use with alkathene. The reinforced garden hose with thick walls is supposed to leak less and come apart less frequently than what I had before. We shall see.

Put blood and bone on the box hedge surrounding the garage lawn; then laid 30m of leaky hose round the hedge to study how it works and how wide a strip it waters. Then began watering the 4m wide planting area with the lemonwoods and karamus – did 2 of the 6 sections with an hour of watering on each.

Today Bicka had a shower – very good about it and happy to be a clean dog afterwards – didn’t roll in anything smelly for almost an hour.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—18°C; no rain. [80.1]

The big oak tree is coming into leaf – it really is springtime.

Mowed Bicka’s pen, the garage lawn, and part of the geese enclosure. The mulch Karola put round the box hedge – the hedge round the garage lawn – has been scattered by birds, possibly my bantams, so I raked that back into place and ensured each bush had breathing space round its stems. Then I added mulch – mainly leaves and lawn clippings – to keep the hedge from drying out. After that I watered the hedge again for about 90 minutes.

As I tidied up where the earth heap was behind the garage I found a pile of fractured concrete slabs hidden in the perriwinkle; I still have to deal with that and with quite a large heap of undergrowth and vegetation I’ve scraped up while moving the earth heap.

Update on my delivery from Matatoa Nursery in Shannon. What a palaver.

I found the Matatoa website through Mrs Google and it had the species / varieties I was looking for. Unfortunately:

• When I wanted to amend my order – change quantities in my shopping basket – I used the UPDATE button provided – and it blanked out my name and address and other particulars I’d typed in on the same form
• Having retyped the information I then found I couldn’t submit it because I’d left some field empty – turned out that this field was an empty drop-down list
• I tried the same thing on the Mac and on Windows XP (using both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers – just in case it was a browser problem – no, they all failed.
• I called the nursery and told them what I’d experienced.
1. I was told that everyone else liked their site and no one else had complained
2. I was dissuaded from describing the problem and told that their IT people were using the site just fine as we spoke
3. Wouldn’t let me talk to the IT people because they were far too busy, said they would tell the IT people and they’d look at it when they had time. I assume the dialogue with IT would go something like: “there’s a customer saying the web site doesn’t work; it’s OK isn’t it? Yes? – Oh, OK, I thought so”
• So I sent an e-mail describing the problem(s) and got a “thank you for feedback” reply – no recognition that there really was a problem that’d stop anyone ordering online and no apology for wasting my time with a broken site
• Next day I checked and the problem was still there so I got hold of the source HTML of the page and copied the buggy bit into an e-mail and sent that off saying I really did want to know if it was something wrong with my systems or a bug in their web site – I explained blow for blow what steps I took to get the problem
• Next day I got an e-mail saying “oh yes, those missing lists were for a new feature for calculating freight charges that didn’t actually work; they shouldn’t have been included in the page and the IT people will take them off. Didn’t seem to be that interested I’d bothered to help nor sorry that I’d had wasted time trying to use their online ordering process.

Meanwhile:

• After I first reported my problems with online ordering I actually made a telephone order – lady said she’d e-mail the order to me for checking later that day and it’d ship on Thursday
• Not having received the e-mail next day I went looking and found it had been caught by spam filters (not really Matatoa’s fault)
• I immediately sent back confirmation and shipping instructions – answering the same questions that were asked on the online form. They had asked for, but I did not include, payment details in the e-mail, instead I rang the lady who took the order initially and gave credit card details over the phone, and a phone number to ring here if anything came up
• The next day I got an e-mail saying I hadn’t included payment details in my order so they couldn’t ship it
• I sent back a polite gentle note saying I thought I’d given details over the phone
• Next morning, having heard nothing I called the nursery and asked to speak to the same person. She said, oh yes, I mixed you up with someone else, it’s all OK. No apology, didn’t even sound sorry. Assuming that the mixup might have delayed shipment I asked when it would be delivered. Early next week, probably.

So, I now anticipate my 40 trees arriving mid week or later next week. These trees better be in superb health!

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—16°C; no rain. [80.9]

Shopping morning:

1. Harris Machinery
• 1 x 20mm brass tap – $21.50 (Farmlands @ $35.70)
• 1 x Hanson plastic bracket-elbow (attaches to post, tap screws into it and 20mm alkathene attaches to it) @ $9.30 (Farmlands @ $9.50)
• 3 x 25mm brass tap adapter (tap to 12mm garden hose) @ $5.45 (Farmlands @ c. $7.00)
• 6 x 15mm alkathene hose stoppers and 12 x clips (to seal off the unneeded and leaking irrigation pipes in the orchard) total $15
• 3 x brass hose connectors @ $9.00 (Farmlands had different, weaker design @ $7.96)
• 1 x 18m thick-walled tough garden hose (to make tap-to-alkathene connectors; surplus will be usable as garden hose) @ $40.00
2. Farmlands
• 1 x 30m seeping/weeping watering hose @ $33.53 (Mitre-10 15m hose @ $40.79; Harris 15m hose @ $25.82, 30m hose @ $47.81)
• 1 x vaccine 5-in-1 multiline w/- selenium 500ml @ $32.77 (Kaz recommended EweGuard which is same w/- added worm control – but 500ml costs $203.00)
• tube of machinery grease for tractor and implements – $5.57; little pipe used when crimping #8 wire joins – to avoid what happened last time when we accidentally chomped through the strainer chain – $8.42
3. Mitre-10
• assorted flathead nails
4. Bull & Hodgins – Engineering Supplies
• 100 x 30mm coach screws – about $0.25 each ($0.24 each at Mitre-10)

I also called in at Jeff Small Electronics in Millar St – looking for a wireless remote extender for Sky digital satellite TV – which allegedly lets you change channels on the set-top box in one room from other rooms in the house. The proprietor was on a trip to Rotorua – apparently while we were having another day of sunshine, Rotorua had torrential downpours. Eponymous proprietor due back next week.

All this, together with a 30 minute grocery shop in New World gobbled up the morning, however, before I left I’d got a call from Sue Hill across the road offering mulch. Tricky Trees (Graeme Cameron) were doing some trimming and, unexpectedly, the Hill’s didn’t want the mulch, so I got 4.5 cubic metres for free. I also asked Graeme cost of mulching up the apple branches I’d cut from the Braeburns a few months ago – he said that the apple branches are slow to mulch because they need cutting into narrow sections that’ll fit in the mulching machine and advised it really would be very expensive – he charges $100/hr or $130/hr with a helper – and to tackle apple branches he’d want at least one helper – and it’d take perhaps 2-3 hours to fill the truck; could be $400 for a truckload compared to $60 if I just bought someone else’s mulch.

Late afternoon I spread some of the earth from the garage heap into hollows in the lawn around the washing line, spread grass seed and watered it.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—20°C; no rain. [81.0]

Today I avoided processing the mulch, instead I moved the heap of earth behind the garage – some went to fill dips in the track from the Homestead entrance across to the new grass paddock; more went on the gateway from the orchard drive towards the Homestead. A small pile went beside the washing line for Karola to use levelling the lawn nearby. Earth filled the deep ruts left by tractors around the gateway from the orchard drive when Alan the orchardist and his men brought the trunks of the felled Royal Galas and piled them up next to the eucalypts. I also built up the ground along the railings leading to the gateway so that the gap between the bottom rail and the ground is too small for Bicka to crawl through. There’s just a few buckets of earth left to tidy up and then the heap – which was excavated to make way for the garage concrete slab foundation – will be gone at last.

Put electric fence in a circle around Karola’s pentangle of totara trees, round the Canary Island pine, so that the sheep don’t damage them when they get bored. The sheep rub on the animal guards until they fall over, and stick their heads through the netting and nip off the totora leaders, given half a chance.

More watering of the Pohutukawas and also of Five Finger and Banksia trees.

I ordered more trees – this time from Matatoa Nursery in Shannon:

• 10 x Acacia sophorae – PB2 @ $4.00
• 10 x Acacia dealbata – 7 x PB6 @ $4.00 & 3 x PB5 @ $2.00
• 10 x Callistemon citrinus – PB5 @ $5.00
• 10 x Callistemon “Red Cluster” – PB5 @ $7.55
• 20 x Coprosma robusta (Karamu) – PB3 @ $4.90
• Transport for this – $51.50 and it’s expected to arrive on Thursday

Between times I finished digitising 4 LPs for Campbell – using “The Vinyl Solution”, a cleaning liquid I bought from Australia and Amadeus II, a program that removes crackles and pops from the digitised recording from old LPs. This is very time consuming. The intent is to end up with CDs each containing the 2 sides of one LP.

Karola rang from UK; Laura Wier rang re sheep mats – http://www.shoof.co.nz is the web site.

When taking Bicka outside at 10:00pm for her constitutional – she’s taken to pooing on the front door mat at night and the constitutional is an attempt to avoid this – I thought I heard faint sound of running water. We went to investigate and yes a water trough pipe connection had broken and water had been pouring onto the ground for many hours, so I turned it off.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—19°C; northerly wind; no rain. [81.4]

Moved sheep into the Middle paddock; they’d done a fair job of trimming the grass in the geese enclosure.

First wysteria flowers are out; Karola’s weeping willow has buds unfurling.

Final 9 bucket-loads of mulch from behind the bamboo; I raked out the 34 bucket-loads as a thin layer mainly round the trees and not filling in the gaps completely – I’ll be using the bought mulch to complete the job.

More watering along the roadside planting area; alos watered Karola’s box hedge round the garage lawn, her border including the two Pohutukawas along the end of the garage, and her herbs by the green shed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—20°C; northerly wind; no rain. [81.5]

Thomas Hobbes is often remembered by his quotation about life being “… nasty, brutish and short”. Well, Chloe, my sister-in-law, is 60 today and I’m off to her birthday open-house at Burleigh in Bulls. Chloe is living testament that Hobbes was wrong, life is not “short”.

Bicka had to travel over on the floor in the passenger seat as the back had 8 bushell boxes destined for Kaz. Karola hopes he’ll put their father’s farming diaries in them for later sorting and storage over here. I had lunch with Kaz and Yvonne at their new house before going on to Burleigh for the afternoon and evening – returning home by midnight. Landrover fuse #8 blew yet again, probably several days ago, but as it only seems to affect the instrument lighting at night I didn’t notice – so, on the return trip I spent 30 mins in a petrol station under their lights trying to find the fuse and replace it. It’s not obvious from the fuse diagram which fuse services those instruments so this time, having looked at every single fuse at least once, when I found it I recorded it as fuse #8. [grrrr]. As it’s happened a couple of times before I carry spare fuses in the glovebox. I suspect, without proof, that rain and having the trailer attached and turning on the lights results in the fuse blowing.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—19°C; south-westerly wind; no rain. [80.9]

Ewe #218 had a bit of footrot in her front left leg so I attended to that. I put all the sheep into the geese enclosure for a couple of days, just to get the grass down a bit and give the ewes a change of scenery.

Overnight a heavy dew had washed some of the wet paint off the gate so I repainted it – from the Homestead it’s very hard to see that there’s a gate there at all – as intended.

Another dozen Fergie buckets of mulch from behind the bamboo. I spread most of that but still have a lot to spread.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—20°C; south-westerly wind; no rain. [80.7]

In the morning I went into Hastings; at Farmlands I bought 15kg of Nutrients dog food and got an extra one free (the 11th one you buy is free). I also got 25kg of lime for the geese enclosure and two taps with plastic mounts. I exchanged 2 gooseneck gate fasteners with anti-lick spring for ones with conventional rings – the thin spring ring may be necessary if you have cattle but are harder to open, especially with bare hands when it’s wet or cold. I’d found this out when using the recently installed netting gate between the Triangle and New Grass paddocks; having taken back the fastener from there I replaced it when I got home.

I swapped the temporary tap fitting on the roadside irrigation pipe for one of the new tap fittings, and fitted a tap to the far end of that pipe, next to the orchard entrance gate.

Adam Ladbrooke (son of Alan) changed the back wheels on the Fergie so they are a bit wider – not the minimum-width orchardist setting that is less stable.

I finished painting the newly erected gate and attached a fastener.

As Campbell suggested, I bought mulch – 4 small truckloads, about 16 cubic metres at $15 a cubic metre. I hpe to complete the mulching of the orchard drive planting area with this and with what remains behind the bamboo. Graeme Cameron (Tricky Trees) found the supplier for me – Stu of Bay Stump and Chipping (06-870-1255).

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—17°C; no rain. [81.5]