September 30,2016

It's been a while since I last posted.  We've had about 5 days of clouds, wind, and rain off and on.  But we did manage to get some work done.

The planting of the 10 Japanese white birches (pictured in previous post) is complete, with posts in the ground and trees attached for support.  They arrived with bare roots and no leaves.  You can hardly see them in this picture.




But, they have already begun to sprout new growth.  Here is just one branch of one tree.




The trees that Mike cut down to make room for the birches are now fire wood, thanks to Mike's hard work!





Spring bulbs are coming up.  Daffodils are already open, 





and tulips are getting ready to bloom.





The fruit trees are in full bloom.








And some of the turkeys and chickens are getting broody.  Here is a turkey nest we found behind the wood shed.





Mike and Heather stumbled onto a fantastic sale at a local nursery and were able to buy (really a steal) 65 toetoe (pronounced toytoy) plants.  We have planted 30 of them so far. The remaining 25 will go along another fence line. 

Here are two of them and they now stand about 10-12 inches high.  The rocks around the base of the plants are to keep the chickens from digging them up!





This is one of my favorite plants in New Zealand.  The picture I found of the full grown plant is copyrighted so I can't post it.

There are also 15-20 flax plants waiting to be planted and that should happen sometime next week.  Colors vary from green to golden to brown.  We'll see what ours turn out to be when they are grown.  The pictures I found of the full grown plants are copyrighted so I can't post them.

The garden project that was going to happen a couple of weeks ago has been changed to this weekend.  I'll take lots of pictures as the work progresses.  I'm anxious to start planting the vegetables!!

And, next time I might have pictures of the raspberry patch!