R&R in the Bush

 Last Friday Elaine and I drove down to Underhill as Covid had curtailed other activities we had planned. We drove down in the rain, at times quite heavy but by the time we got there it was fine.

However lighting the fires was a slow job but we were able to boil the kettle and start the bush fire hazard reduction burning making quite a difference to the rubbish and prunings around the shed.

One little surprise was a microbat hiding in the box of newspaper for burning off. I covered him over gently but by bedtime he was gone. I've since had him identified as Nyctophilus geoffroi (how cool is that!).

I slept quite soundly after all the activity and we were able to start up the fires again in the morning.

Geoff and family arrived at about morning tea time by which time I had discovered where the coffee was hiding and was able to make a pot.

Lots more burning off, carting rubbish, and moving huge logs to a safer place to burn. Hooray! Most large logs are now gone and so is a lot of the weedy shrub cover that appeared with the rain.

Another surprise was a very small harvest of olives. This is the first harvest since it was planted sometime before 1988. Geoff is going to try to make them edible.

There were lots of Lady Williams apples on the tree behind the stove but they were covered in black spot. Apparently we have to prune yet more to allow more air circulation. The yellow apples in the tray are a few left over Five Crown and the smaller red/green ones are from a French Crabapple in the berry yard. I am busy making fruit leather and the chooks will get lots of the smaller ones which they love.

Geoff had brought down a trailer load of things he needs to store whilst moving and after unloading all that we were able to load up some rubbish for his street cleanup next week. We also burnt off anything that was combustable (but not plastics). I brought back some old tins and bottles of 'stuff' for a chemical cleanout collection this weekend too.

We spent a bit of time cleaning out one of the cupboards in the scullery which not only had termites but also lovely soft mouse nests. In the end we burnt off the whole cupboard.

We all stayed down Saturday night and left on Sunday morning after breakfast after a most satisfying time and also quite exhausted.