Life gets busy

Before today dawned it was clear it was going to be busy.  Tasks on the agenda included:

1. Take small dog for a trot along the road
2. taking the recyclables to the pickup point;
3. getting a trailer load of dirt from the Council dump to repair the drive after the last flood;
4. collect a load of pine needles to go under the strawberries;
5. pick up some sawn off willow logs;
6. Attend the Geranium Society show;
7. put nets over most of the fruit trees.

I suspected a few other things might arise as the day wore on.  To my surprise items 1 - 5 went like clockwork.  I was even able to fit in a trip to the sun orchids between # 5 and 6.  They seem to have self pollinated. Drat, but at least I don't have to fuss about them any more.

We visited a friend in Canberra after #6 to pick up some trombacini (our entry in the world's most amuusing vegetable competition) seeds and seedlings.

All the nets for the trees were stored in a metal shed which is accessible by rodents.  As such it is a very popular hunting venue for the small dog.  On this occasion, when I pulled a sack of netting off a high shelve I felt it wriggle.  Yep, there was a rat in there (I have no idea how it climbed 1.5m up a metal wall to get into this shelf, but there it was).  I attracted the small dog's attention but Uncle Rat managed to wriggle out of the sack a tad before Tammy was ready and took a 4m horizontal dive, followed by a metre dive straight down its hole.  This surprised the small dog who missed the rats butt by about 3cm.  She spent most of the next 30 minutes trying to work out how to dig through a concrete shed base to discuss matters with the rat.  Fox terriers do not like rodents!

WRT to the fruit trees the main issue is fitting the nets to the trees and supports.  This is always an entertaining activity, made more important by the activities last year of the Crimson Rosella element of the Red Brigade stripping a poorly protected pear tree.  The three main trees I intended to net are shown in this image.

The next three images give an idea of the density of cropping on (in order a red apple tree, a green apple and the pear tree which got stripped last year).

Some plum trees look to have very little fruit on them,  Whether this is due to extra wetness of the soil or to poor pruning this year is unclear, but I am not sure if it is worth the effort to net the trees.

What did seem worth the effort was putting some slug bait around the new trombacini (the gastropods whupped the first lot) and some emerging bean plants (the previous lot having succumbed to a flood).  This is a bit of a nuisance since it means we can't let small dog in there while the bait is around, but we do like our vegies!