Winter is not the only thing ending shortly; today heralds the end of my 'service ranger' job and a start on Monday as an 'administration officer'. Major restructures on this scale are stressful but I hope the dust settles soon and strong leadership makes it all worthwhile.
I've decided that cloning myself would solve a lot of problems and help me work through my 'to do' list at lightning speed. Fine weather means firewood time and it's been satisfying to work my way through the woodpiles.
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| Two woodpiles sorted out - now to get the chainsaw out!!! |
There's a thousand other fine weather jobs waiting for me: Darwin's barberry is starting to flower so that needs to be searched out and destroyed, along with gorse, blackberry and lupin. I need to get seeds and seed potatoes planted and my poor blackcurrants still haven't been pruned and transplanted from two years ago. I did manage to install my 3 vertical KaMate rat traps though...
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| The new KaMate trap on the left along with 2 Victor traps on the right |
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Lifting the lid on the KaMate trap - the trap's not set yet and putting
some baits around will hopefully get the right 'smells' |
Signs of Spring are increasing daily and the birds are getting frisky. The native fuchsia,
Fuchsia excorticata, or kotukutuku, is bursting into leaf and flower and I spent 30 minutes trying to get a good photo of the birds feeding on it before giving up and swapping to a flowering brush wattle.
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| A camera-shy tui who kept hiding in the branches |
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| This waxeye (silvereye) was more co-operative |
Despite not getting a good 'bird on the fuchsia' pic, I had fun photographing the new leaves and flowers - the New Zealand fuchsias are apparently the only fuchsias in the world with blue pollen and early NZ pollen fossils have been dated as being over 30 million years old.
How's this for a weird visitor - it was on my jacket after a morning sorting wood.
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| Is it a bird, is it a plane??? |
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| Nah, it's a Bag Moth caterpillar |
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| The end of a Bic biro for scale |
