Last week was my first week back and I really struggled to put in a full day Monday to Friday.

This week, I just gave up and treated myself to a day off doing some yard jobs that having been nagging at me.

So far I have been lucky with the newly planted trees and the weather. Everytime I though they might be in danger of going dry we have had a day or two of rain.

However, we have reached the time of year where I really need to extend the simple reticulation system to cater for all the new plantings.

I was up at 5.00 am and out to Wooroloo by 6.30 am.

I extended the 18mm polypiping near Ian's shed to reach almost to the front of the block (he might be planting some extra tea trees in my property) as well as running some finer lines to the recently planted tea trees.

Down on the creek line I added another 6m of polypipe to almost reach Ross's fence and inserted drippers to water all the new sheaoks.

It was a cold morning and the piping was as tough as iron - so I had to place quite a few bricks to hold the pipe down.

Also, as part of this job, I removed the last of the slabs across the top of the bank.

Later, during the day, I raked up some of the wild grass I had slashed down and used this as mulch to cover the black weed matting that is holding the bank together (otherwise it cooks the roots of the plant).

Of course, everything is look very encouraging during the mild spring weather - we need to see if these trees can survive through the extreme of summer.

I've bagged and mulched everything as well as setting up the allowed twice weekly retic watering.

I'll keep an eye on everything and if necessary install some shade cloth as well if they start to look stressed.

Next I moved on to knocking down all the wild oat and rye grass. This will become a fire hazard very soon and is also looking very untidy.

Ross had been in with a ride on mower and knocked down all the large areas for me.

This gave me a very good start but I still spent from 10.00 am to 2.00 pm working my way around with the brush cutter.

A hive of wild bees in one of the trees along the creek line also added excitement to the process.