Daylight saving came off yesterday so, naturally I’m up at 5am this morning and what better else to do than catch up on the blog.
The delphiniums continue to display their enjoyment of the cooler conditions (below 24DegC highs and cooler nights) by producing, dark green foliage and strong, new flower spikes. The summer heat seems to have delayed the
autumn flowering a little but it looks like the quality will be excellent. This is good news as seed for some of our lines is scarce and we need more to fill orders.
I’m not sure where I left the saga of the new growing house. The situation now is that since being “fixed” it has sprung leaks in both the roof vents, where rain water is somehow seeping between the two layers of the “twin skin” plastic, and in the central gutter from where it pours inside. I’m told that it will be fixed. We await developments in this on-going saga. In the mean time the delphiniums are growing well inside.
The automation of the roof vents is still about two weeks away and that means I have to keep a close eye on weather conditions (wouldn’t want the vents blowing off would I?). To help with this I bought a weather station. The monitoring of this was going to need the cooperation of our computer in the work shed, the LAN cables from the shed to the house and a friendly computer programme to allow me to “see” the station from the pc in the house. Well, this time we have a bonus as the weather station can communicate directly with the house, 140 metres away via radio that is advertised at being good for 100 metres only. This goes to prove that in life there are swings and roundabouts – but sometimes we get to go on the slide!
This last week end was populated by other fortunate events too.
I felled the last pine tree destined for late winter firewood. This was fraught with possible calamities as the 25 to 30 metre tree had to fall in exactly 
the right place in order to avoid ...the garage; the large, decorative oak tree; the young feijoa (really nice fruit); the “Black Boy” peach and the ginkgo. Of course the garage was the most important target for avoidance. Well, the feijoa is mid distance between the oak and the peach, there being about 5 or 6 metres between each one. I figured I couldn’t possible fell the pine with that sort of accuracy so decided to aim straight for the feijoa. Bingo! It landed mid distance between the feijoa and the peach as you can see – what a cunning plot!. I was extremely happy and relieved.
If your week end was half as successful you will have had a great one.
Cheers
Terry
