Tree, tree, 1-2-3...

From Badjelly The Witch, this is part of the incantation that Binklebonk the tree goblin uttered to make the door on the tree big enough for the children to enter. Yesterday it was more a case of  "Tree, tree, 1-2-3, please don't fall and smash on me..!!". Swamp working bee time, and we had to knock over a large branch of a giant willow, that was threatening to fall on the hut. We cleared a large lower bough and then Tim propped the ladder against the trunk of the tree and climbed up. I decided that a photo would be cool, so went to get my camera and was fiddling with it to get setup when Tim made the first cut.... immediately the log began to fall and I was (stupidly!) directly in its landing path. A quick dash and leap and I got away, just, but still got hammered by some of the peripheral branches. Turns out that only a small section was holding the branch up, so it was going to fall anytime soon. Nothing like some excitement to start the day.

Tim, dad and I were there to carry out some missions, namely to spray the pond edges and also to cut firewood and construct a new long drop. The ponds were looking great a couple of weeks ago, but with the nice rainy and warm days the weed growth was amazing, especially the Poa Aquactica (Glyceria) which now has a toe hold in our area. We smashed it a couple of years ago but it creeps back if you don't watch it. To get it all requires heavy methodical spray application so our progress was slow and after 5 hours or so we had barely covered half of the pond edges.

Tim spraying

One thing I didn't notice many of was ducks. Tim had a humorous moment when a grey teal leaped from its nest in a hollowed punga right by his head and scared the crap out of him. Plenty of swan sign around, and with duck feathers in abundance as well, the ponds are certainly being patronised, even if we didn't see them.

Swan toilet

So we'll be back to mop up the second phase of spraying and to finish up the odd jobs.