Cold start so delayed getting up and about for an hour or so.

James Russell came at 10:00am as planned and he bought karola’s six wether lambs for good prices. Nice bloke.

Afterwards: Bangle – orchard – apple

Then Karola went off to Havelock North to pick up a pair of Banksia yellow rose plants from Green Door. Meanwhile I was fossicking around trying to replace dead light bulbs. I replaced the one in the house kitchen, so at least there’s one light there which works, the other socket just fuses all the lights. One of the house garage prowler lights is dead but in trying to replace it much of the fitting disintegrated – plastic had become very brittle. Replaced another dead light on the outside of the cottage but now plan to change all seven outside lights on the cottage together so they all look the same.

The topping of the Ngaios made a mess on the orchard drive so I called Peter Fitzpatrick to let him know that in addition to yesterday’s trimming – he’d asked for the inside to be done yesterday – there was a lot more debris from trimming the top. No problem, he was going to get it all mulched up anyway and if we had any bigger pieces I should add them to the drive stuff and his man would mulch it all up. In practice there was very little mess outside the planting area on our side. I heard the orchard mulcher going late afternoon so I guess it’s all done and dusted now. The happy old Maori guy, one of JB’s (ie Peter’s) workers talked to me about the trimming around this time last year and he agreed to get the Ngaio tops done this year. I’d since forgotten all about that and so this year I approached the trimming guy directly and asked him to do it. The old Maori guy turned up just a few minutes after the trimmer and his enormous tractor had gone. He was looking for the trimmer to ask him to do the tops of the Ngaios – he hadn’t forgotten our discussion last year. To his delight, although he was too late to catch the trimmer man now, the tops had been done. So everyone is happy.

Karola suggested I mulch up the Casurina trash on our southern boundary and so I spent a fruitless hour or so trying to get the old orchard mower attached to the new tractor. Unfortunately the PTO drive shaft is just too long, even when fully collapsed (one end slides inside the other) to attach to the new tractor. When Karola got home she observed that as the old tractor was working again I could just use it with the orchard mower – wish I’d thought of that.

Southern Windbreak Needing A Trim

Here Comes The Trimmer, Finishing The Section In Karola’s Orchard

Short Back & Sides – Avoiding Karola’s Kanuka In Front

And Now The Top

Ngaios Towering Over The Orchard Driveway

Trimming The Tops

Nearly Done

Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—13℃ 0.2mm rain [73.1]