The Good Life with Sue Edmonds

The other week the view from my kitchen window changed. The tall and rotting stump of a white poplar down the paddock was no longer vertical, but horizontal.

I assume a cow had done some heavy leaning, but the rot at ground level had obviously completed a full circle, leaving a bare patch on the ground where the hollow centre had been. That hollow bit had, for several winters, provided shelter for some small animal, although I never discovered exactly what.

A friend offered to bring a chainsaw and reduce the very large lump to manageable bits and there wasn't much left that would have been worth burning, with the chainsaw sashaying through most of it at high speed.

So we carried the cut pieces to the end of the paddock and threw them over the fence into a fenced tree area. No doubt the bugs that produced the rot will finish it all off in fine style.

Several days before this, I had noticed that a group of lemonwoods, originally planted 14 years ago as seedlings, were now almost touching the power lines along the road. Armed with two handsaws and a ladder, I spent an exhausting two hours cutting through just two, which promptly fell part way over the fence and got jammed in the foliage.

So when my friend arrived he first did some felling, trimming and cutting up of lemonwoods, while I sweated and heaved, making a huge pile of twiggy foliage sitting on the berm.

I've promised myself to attempt to do something with it when it's a bit drier! In the meantime, I rescued all the potential firewood and stacked it in a sunny spot until next year, by which time it will be burnable.

I am now more confident, however, that the power board people won't come back demanding more tree trimming just yet, as I had my ‘free' trim last year and would have to pay this time!

The deluges of rain which fell over Hamilton and the Bay recently seemed to have an aversion to Eureka. While they got flooded and drenched running to their cars, we got a miserable 20mm during the week.

The ground had been rock-like, and my efforts when shifting the fence in the mornings required jumping on the stakes to get them in far enough, and grass growth had seriously slowed.

At least I can now get the stakes in, although some are going to require another session in the vice in the garage to straighten them out a bit, and I've been waving my hands at the other paddocks, urging those tillers to get going.

I've got 10 bags of lime in the garage, which have been there since autumn. My kind neighbour has, in the past, whirled my fertiliser and lime around behind his ATV, but first there was calving, and then mating, and then he got married, and went on honeymoon!

I cleared the thistles and other nasties from around his maize crop (at least where our boundaries join, but on his side of the fence) so will have another go at asking politely. In the meantime, as with other farms around here, the docks are doing well.