September 21, 2013
Help from Friends!                       

Last Tuesday Mike returned to Auckland to finish the work he had put on hold when he came home to begin to deal with the issues facing us after the storm.  Heather and I spent last week limbing trees with our little hand saws and making brush piles around the yard. Fighting through the tangle of several trees all fallen on top of each other makes for a quite a mess.  Hands, arms, pants and shirts are all covered with pine sap.  We smell nice!!  --  like a pine forest : )    But getting the sap of the skin is a challenge.  And we don't hold out any hope that the clothes will ever be clean again.  So now, in addition to the "paint pants" from two years ago (I spilled a whole can of paint on myself while painting one of the upstairs rooms), I have my "sap pants".

On Sunday, another set of friends, Fran and Neil, arrived to help.  In the morning, Mike cut most of the trees we had limbed into logs and Neil dragged them out of the orchard and stacked them in drying piles.  After lunch, Heather and I started limbing another group of trees outside the orchard and Fran carried the brush away.  Mike and Neil worked on the west side of the driveway.  Later in the afternoon, we moved to the east side of the driveway. Pictures below show the progress we are making, but sadly, we still have not even cleared away all the trees that fell into the clearing around the house or in the chicken's yard.

Here is the orchard the day after the storm

And here it is today

Here is the driveway two days after the storm. 

And here it is today.

Anine and her chicks continue to do well.  I think we have spoiled them, giving them treats at the front door.  Now they are sitting there every morning waiting for us.  

While the chickens are enjoying free access to the garden beds, we have decided to start our planting in small containers and transplant everything when the garden is secure.  Today I'm going to try and clear away the brush from the back fence area of the garden so we can plan how we are going to replace the fencing.  Good times!!