Stuck in the mud

The day the tractor came to mow was always going to be exciting for our resident tractor fanatics.

We didn't expect it to get even more exciting but then he got stuck in the creek when he finished. We had the excitement of two tractors the next day as the farmer who grazes his sheep on our paddock had to pull out the mowing tractor.

Disasters notwithstanding, he did a lovely job of topping the paddock and now we just need to wait for the next flock of sheep to appear.

Upstream

Here's our stream, 100 metres or so above the creek that I posted about a couple of days ago.

 

It rises just above the next block, on the ridge of the hill, and runs after heavy rainfall but dries up in summer. 

Kenneth William Vickers 1919-2012

A crabapple tree and an oak tree.
Chocolate biscuits and a cup of tea,
By the bed, at six in the morning
Just as the new day is dawning.

Bacon sandwiches on white bread.
Wild birds always well fed.
A round of rummy and a turned wood bowl.
An open fire piled high with coal.

A garden buzzing with honey bees.
Christmas cake with icing please.
Rabbits burrow under the summer house.
A drill now home to a sleepy mouse.

A herd of sheep and a deer in the field.
A pear for dessert, carefully peeled.
A crossword puzzle and a good thick book.
Electric blankets and a view of the Nook.

A walk to the river every day.
A mint for the horse along the way.
Hydrangeas blooming by the path.
James Bond and an afternoon bath.

And always,
A workshop full of fresh sawdust.

Knee high and full of grasshoppers

Continuing the tour of our paddock, here's a photo which shows why we needed the paddock topped by one of the local agricultural contractors. The green grass at the top of the hill is the area where the sheep prefer to graze. There are few weeds and the grass is going well because the sheep keep it cropped - and fertilise it as they go.

The area in the foreground is tussocky and filled with coarse grasses that don't tempt the sheep. The coarse grass smothers the better quality grass and the sheep can't get to it.

As the coarse grass grows up, other weeds appear too - like reeds, brambles and the gorse that you can see below.

In some places though the native trees seed and grow like the manuka that are emerging at the base of one of the pine trees.

We were lucky that we managed to go almost four years without getting the paddock mulch-mowed. I think that the farmer who grazes it has managed it well, maintaining the optimum stock levels. The weeds were beginning to take over though so it's all been cut back now just in time for the spring flush to emerge.

Trespassing

Lots of bloggers do house tours and I enjoy nosying around other people's homes remotely. I posted lots of photos of our place at the end of our renovations a few months ago so I thought the next logical thing to post was a tour of our paddock and its surroundings.

I had a few hours to myself one sunny Sunday morning a few weeks ago and went roaming around the land to see what was going on. I was looking for our missing chicken - that was my excuse for nipping over the fence into next door's bush block anyway.

I was pleased to find the creek flowing well on the other side of the fence - it mostly flows underground across our land then drops about six feet on the boundary. I was surprised to see how much water it held below our land. Still not enough for a hydroelectric power supply but I wonder if it's home to any fish or frogs. Or eels! 

First Fire

After experimenting with different kinds of kindling on our fire over winter, we realised that there wasn't much point chopping up the fallen branches from the coral tree and the cherry trees that James pulled down. They didn't burn well enough to make it worthwhile bringing them indoors - far better to burn them outside and let J have the pleasure of building a bonfire.

Unfortunately I'd been reading about the dangers of fires on lifestyle blocks so I insisted on J building it up gradually but I think he still had fun. He's eyeing up another pile of fallen branches on the other side of the paddock for his next fire but it'll have to stop raining before he can light it.

Green leaves, green fingers

These geranium leaves might not look like much to you but to me they signify great success. Several years ago, I was given these cuttings my a member of our local gardening club and she told me how to propagate them. I duly dipped the cut stems in hormone solution and planted them in a mix of pumice and potting mix.

They survived and grew a little so I planted them out at the shady end of the house, close to a couple of hydrangeas - what might become my English border. Nothing much happened though I could see that one or two of the plants were fighting through the weeds. And then suddenly they've burst into life this spring and I have at least four different varieties of geraniums starting to flower. My favourite is the one with the half-star-shaped leaf in the bottom right corner.

Now I'm going to start looking around to see what else I can pinch and propagate...