Progress marches on...

The last post was a bit of a catch up on months of very poor blogging and sporadic visits to the creek to get on with the job at hand.  The mild spring and early summer here meant that everyone's lawns and gardens grew furiously with no view of dormancy in sight, and I ran like a crazy man to keep up.  Just before and after Christmas there was some staircase action, and as of yesterday, this is where we are, with the finish only days away...

Nick really has done a great job here, the slope was a real challenge, but now we can easily walk down to the creek!  You really need to try to walk up the hill stair-free to appreciate how awesome this structure is. Nearly 60 steps!

Back to the clearing.  After a big break from it, clearing has commenced with earnest.  This whole area is unrecognisable now with the big willows gone.  Sorry folks, they were gorgeous, but they had to go to make way for the right native trees.  And yes, I know, the poplars are not native, but they do create an interesting vista, and will remain until they fall.  I do wonder how long that will be, they are very old and last month one fell all by itself, rotten at its base.

Now we can see a cleared creek way.  I might keep some of the big logs as natural bridges.

I am back there again tomorrow, still more to clear, so much rubbish to haul out of these dry beds and up the hillsides and only 3 more months till the burning season!

Here is a shot of the area to the left of the staircase (facing the road), to show this area nearly ready for the reveg process.  You get a real sense of achievement when you look at it all from this perspective!

The hard trees, they're gunna fall

"Use the chainsaw, Nick!"

This is actually an old post from October...yes, it has been a while since my last post...

It is a week since my last visit to The Creek, and today was particularly satisfying.  I brought in my great friend and landscaping buddy Nick Thwaites, to do some tree felling.  The ones I had in mind were all in need of sensitive dropping.  They either were too close to the road, the power lines, other trees that did not need to be squished, or simply on really treacherous terrain. By tricky terrain, I mean a 45 degree slope on slippery loose soil.  A lot of fun...

We dropped about half a dozen this day, including the olive behind Nick in the photo above.  That one was a bit scary, as there was little room for error and not a lot of running away room.  We dropped it pretty much where we wanted it, so no drama there... Prepping the tree and site beforehand takes quite a while, which surprised me.

By November the real big trees came down, and our tree guy Nathan Beers brought the massive willows down.  He was amazing to watch!

 But Nick and I wanted more excitement and adventure.  So we decided to build a staircase from the house to the creek!  Below is during mid project... This whole area was big willows, now all cleared leaving the natives.  Future posts will start to look at the re-vegetation program, which will be really interesting.  In the meantime there is still a lot of clearing to do.

Chainsaw action

Today was great, made some big progress in a couple of areas and dropped some problem trees which were a bit close to the road for my liking.  This chainsaw, it just powers through all this soft timber!  A number of burning piles have been renewed and stacked high, and know that Sue will have a ball burning them away! Which she did (below)...

The first area of dramatic improvement is right at the driveway (above).  I raked up all the weeds and blackberry that were choking the creek (on the road side of the creek) and must say the place is looking a bit raw and exposed.  Still, it was all necessary and I hear from a great authority that now that the ground is clear again, the dormant native seeds will now take this opportunity to renew their bid for supremacy of the creek. Now to see what emerges!

The next area needing attention was the other side of the driveway, which was too hard to get to following all the rain we have had lately.  The main tree problem here or was is hawthorn.  For the record, this is a horrible tree to work with.  Spiky, tangled, whippy and generally uncooperative.  I will be very glad to get this lot burned away!  Building this pile opened up my arms countless times and defied my thick leather gloves too.  The first pic below is deceptive, the pile is at least 2 metres tall.

This is one of the trickier trees to drop and involved a bit of clever roping off, which worked a treat.  And of course when I cut it all up I got shredded.  Payback, I suppose...

Steady progress!

Thanks to the flu I was taken out of commission for a couple of weeks, missing 2 weeks of the most glorious weather and returned to the real world of winter all over again.  It even hailed one day!  My poor little seedlings at home are very confused... On the other hand, this is perfect bonfire weather, everything is wet or damp.  Once you get the fire going, you can pretty much burn anything.  Not surprisingly, blackberry bushes burn nicely, and the weed trees, particularly willow, burn hot and fast.

Last week was my first visit in three weeks, and made up for it with some more blackberry clearing and tree felling.  Tree felling is very fun and blackberries bite.  My forearms are like pincushions!  Despite the hazards, it goes without saying that each bit of reclaimed land brings enormous satisfaction.  Sue and I have a perfect arrangement now, I build the bonfire piles and she burns them at her leisure.  Tending the fires is a surprisingly time consuming activity and it is staggering how much material can be cleared away in a few hours.   I am more than happy to do the burn pile building...

Bonfire day!

I have not quite figured out how to get the text to start at the top of the posting, so this will have to do!

Today was another great day, Sue returned from her African adventure and I was able to start burning off the piles of branches and brambles I have been making.  Luckily Sue was up for a good ole fashioned bonfire or two as well! It was also excellent to have some company down on the creek as well...

 The above shots show some before and after shots and must say that it is great to see phase two of the clearing project well under way.  Phase one are the areas on either side of the driveway, and these will be next in line for a burning.  As fun as the bonfire making is, there are some key things to keep watch of, despite everything being very wet within the clearing zone.  There are overhead power and phone lines to be mindful of, so all fires are positioned as clear of these spots as well as keeping good proximity from the road as well.  It is not as easy as it sounds!  The phase 3 zone will also be one to watch with those lines as there is more material to burn there.  The plan is to do numerous small burnings.  There are lots of trees yet to bring down on the uphill side of the creek, but right now it is still a bit treacherous to climb any of those slopes safely.

The week ahead is going to be dry and unseasonably warm.  All the more incentive to get on with the burning regime!  I really do not want to be stuck with a lot of dry material, no water flowing and spring/summer rapidly approaching...

Some progress

The biggest challenge I have had with really getting stuck into the creek is time.  My gardening business is just full on and to add some more pressure, the weather has been a bit grim.  The days I have allocated for the clearing have been the wettest.  Being a creek at the base of the hills, there has been just a bit more water flowing through the work zone than I feel comfortable with, despite my heavy duty gumboots, which are a godsend.  Steel cap gummies just add another layer of invincibility to stomping around very unstable ground.

The other aspect of this task which is making the world of difference is having top class equipment.  It makes the job so much easier, but even better, much safer too.  Chainsawing a lot of these trees is not easy with the super softness of the banks.  I will be using a lot of the logs to shore up these steep slopes to reduce any future erosion, and provide a secure spot for the new native plantings.

Changes