Where did today go?

I am not really sure where the time went today. I got up late (10.15am) I must have been tired from not sleeping very well the night before the drain layers arrived. Plus I added another duvet - the weather media says we have a low of 10 and a high of 21 at the moment but out here we get more extremes - last night it got to 8 degrees at about 4am and to a high of 26 degrees at 8.30am (thanks to our weather station). So yeah - the nights have been cooler but the days lovely and hot! In fact today was so hot while I was doing all my jobs I was sweating.

I went to the nursery in Muriwai - it's a cool place called AWA nurseries and up a gravel road but huge and has lovely large specimens. I got 7 (because that's all I could fit in my wheelbarrow) Tenaxe flaxes. The place was crazy busy - a queue a mile long of people buying stuff (as I keep asking - what recession??). They were a great size and only $12. They have a sale on for three weeks so I'll go during the week I think. I really do need some more plus something for this side of the pipe as well. The Tenaxe flax is good for swampy areas it said (plus I checked with the lady and she said that was the only flax that would be ok with water).


I then took a couple of barrow loads of topsoil down to back fill the pipe as it's kinda sticking out on the track side and we can back fill on that side - but only plant out on the other side. I wanted to add some to the top of the pipe that crosses the track too as it was not buried very deep there. I added some river stones to the part that is out of the ground so the horses wouldn't stand on it.


After I dumped the topsoil I filled the barrow twice on the way up with clay from the digger treads that had been munged into the grass!! So annoying.

Then I found all the plastic bits from where the guy drilled holes in the 16m long plastic pipe - they were all over the paddock - hundreds of them. Good grief - some people really do not think about the fact they are in a horse paddock, or that I only have 3 acres of grazing so grass is like gold and having clay munged into it a foot each side of the covered trench is very annoying indeed. I literally lifted up sheets of it in track patterns with perfectly good grass underneath.

My bird scarers seem to be working well. On the part on the track where I don't have any the birds were eating the seed so I gave it a sprinkling of hay to cover up the soil and the seed.


The boys were a bit iffy about the pipe - I walked down there to take this photo and Maraschino gave it a sideways stare.


There are also a flock (?) of ducks - paradise ducks in the maize field and they have white heads some of them so I think they look a bit odd to the horses.

Not really sure what is happening to this grisilinea - it's dying from the side!

Speaking of dying - these two flew into the garage window I think - they were outside the window - they would have been able to see right through as there is no garage door on the other side. Poor things.