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As we were back in NZ at the perfect time for planting (supposedly cold, wet and when the ground’s soft, I guess) we thought we’d chuck a few things on our patch of dirt.

• 100 odd teeny weeny Pittosporums as a hedge/windbreak
• 1 Golden Elm – Ulmus Pro, Louis V Houtte
• 1 Malus Ballerina (basically a pink blossom crab apple tree)
• 1 Purple Norway Maple (Acer Platanoides Nigrum if you care for the technical details!)

We managed to get the pittosporums more or less in a row, but then who wants a perfectly straight line anyway!

Of course we didn’t do this all on our own. We had a good crew of helpers always ready to give some helpful advice…  Whilst standing around drinking a few well deserved beers for all their hard work!

Just kidding! The crew were fantastic. I had wondered at the start of the day just how long it would take us, and whether Bec and I would have to return the next day to finish off, but in the end we had it all done in about 5 hours, and that was with a fair bit of mucking around at the end, and in between to recover from the hole digging from time to time (Bec – I think I  recall looking up from planting to see in the distance a lot of standing around doing nothing – apparently discussing what shape to dig the next hole in?!) (Mike – Well, Jacob had some very strong ideas about that!  Some were to be round, and some square.  It was obviously important to get it right! And there was a bit of a hold up when Lexi decided that the hole we’d just dug was the most comfortable chair in the world.)

And then there was the big stop for a dose of good old Kiwi pies to refuel.  Ahhhh Kiwi pies!  One of the joys of returning to NZ.  I could write a whole post on them, but then I’d just make myself hungry.

Now all we have to do is wait and see how many of the trees actually survive.  But we guess that’s up to the magic watering pixies (Rob and Dawn, and Jeff and Cole)…….  fingers crossed the roster for watering and TLC works!  All in all if was a great day out on the plot and if it works then, hey, we have a bit of a head start when we finally get our butts in gear and build a house!

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Plants and Gardens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.