Two More Goals Achieved - Monday 27/04

Can't believe I didn't have the mother of all bruises this morning. Not a mark to show for all the pain and uncomfortable night. Still hurts but we'll talk about that later after I finish the weekend. Just thought its probably less confusing to go and edit the Weekend blog so its back to the weekend and I'll rejoin today soon or as its turned out tomorrow.

Well it's really Tuesday evening now and still before midnight - think I'm going for a record!

Monday was a brilliant day - cold but not raining. Although the sky constantly threatened to let loose whatever was hiding in the dark grey clouds, it never did, instead providing bright contrasting swathes of sunlight at add odd times throughout the day. Somewhere in all of this I need to learn how to properly operate my new digital slr. "Auto" is terrific but I know I can get much better depth of field because I've done it previously. Trouble is I stumbled across it rather than reading the manual so it hasn't stuck yet. A fairly convoluted segue into the fact that I really love the light that happens in these sorts of conditions and took out quite a bit of time from work to try and capture some of it.

If I can crack the technology, I think there's an opportunity for an exhibition at some time in the future.

The tasks for Monday were to remove all of the dead Manchurian Pears along the drive and plant their newly purchased replacements. Took me most of the afternoon because I wasn't hurrying and kept wandering off to pick up branches and in one instance a $20 dollar note caught under some eucalypt branches tangled with a dead pear. It went into my pocket and the branches went onto the pile. Can't believe I didn't take a picture of the dug in and mulched trees but that's the way it was so we'll have to make do with a before shot.

Had to replace a jubilee clip on one of the smaller fire hoses as it had come off at the T-junction. Fortunately Nicco had found a brass fitting attached to a bit of the right diameter poly pipe on Saturday and I knew just where he'd left it, complete with an almost new clip. Job done I fired up the pump and gave the newly planted trees a good soak as well as watering all the other new plants and the remaining plants in the garden.

That done it was time to look for the elusive gate posts. I'd made several previous attempts by guessing where I reckoned they should be but without success. It was time for a slightly more scientific approach. As fence posts are roughly 3m apart and I had the line from several that had not completely burned below the soil, I got out the tape measure and kept going in a straight line, and digging up the soil about every 3100 - 3300mm. Should have been a piece of cake but obviously near enough had been good enough for the original fence builder.

I found the first gate post at about 17:00 and was almost prepared to call it a day but being bloody minded decided that the other couldn't be much more than 3500mm radius away because that's how long the gate was. Just a passing thought - how hard would it have been for the Main Roads guys to have removed my gates before they chopped down the bloody tree. Would have saved me the cost of two gates and taken them about two minutes.

Anyway they didn't and it took me about another ten minutes to find the second gate post. I dug around them and stuck a couple of gate fittings next to them so they would be easily visible in future. Very pleased with myself, I called Ros and headed for North Warrandyte and a warm shower.