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It's a long weekend here and while I hope to get a little bit of gardening done most of the weekend will be filled with report writing as it's "that" time of the year for teachers. I was talking to a Canadian teacher I know and it's reporting time for them right now as well.

Updates:
The Developer appeared on Wednesday and planted some"substantial trees" as per the council request.   NOT!  He's planted two rows of a shrub that grows eventually to 2-3 m. Right now they are  on average 40cm tall. Hmmm All that waiting and delaying fencing for this.

What was most amusing is he just appeared and started fiddling around.  Not knock on the door. No hello I'm here. It would have been pretty obvious someone was home too.  Hubby just happened to look out the door and see him on our property preparing to dig some holes.
Photos today when I am actually around in daylight hours as I leave before it's bright enough to take photos and have gotten home too late to  take photos this week. 

Kunzea baxteri: is a member of the Myrtaceae family and is known as the Crimson Kunzea.

Kunzea baxteri is a small to medium shrub with spreading, sometimes erect branches. The leaves are linear, densely crowded, mid-green and about 15 by 3 wide.

The spectacular, bottlebrush shaped flower heads are 10 centimetres long by 8 centimetres wide, deep red, scattered to profuse and very conspicuous. Blooms usually appear between March and September with sporadic flowering at other times. The Crimson Kunzea is one of the showiest species of the genus.

Tip pruning will improve foliage density and flowering.

Kunzea baxteri is a native of Western Australia and was first cultivated in England in 1838.

Plants growing in colder areas are best grown in sheltered shrubberies as they may be damaged by frost.

hmm We have frost! Somehow these don't sound like the significantly substantial  tree he was meant to plant.  He used a post and dug tiny little holes. Plus he is supposed to water them.  He had been meaning to install some sort of reticulation and had discussions with us in December about doing this. Well he hasn't and it hasn't rained since he planted them so Dh was down the back yesterday giving them all a water.   We were expecting a bobcat or other digger type because the trees were meant to be huge ones.  I'm guessing he wanted to save lots of $ as he would have found loads of rock and it would have been hard and expensive work.  Drats! as  we had a cunning plan to replace some of these trees with things of our own choice later down the track knowing that the holes had been dug and the rocks removed.  These will be hard to remove. They will find there way through the rock and make it difficult to replace with established trees of our own choosing later.  DAMN! Still at least we are rid of him. But given the size of these trees he's now planted we didn't need to delay fencing at all. So I'm really not happy.

Lighting:
Another disappointment as it seems the lights we wanted to buy are discontinued. It seems a similar light is made by a couple of other lighting companies so hopefully we'll be able to find something. But we did find a spotlight track we really liked and possibly a large light for the lounge room although the price from the lighting shop for the 3 light version  is a bit higher than  the same light in the 5 Light version  from an online store....hmmm

Ute:
fuel gauge fixed
Temp gauge fixed ( we think) We'll test it out this weekend, But we may need a thermostat as well yet.The workshop have warned us that if the thermostat is missing it might be an indicator that the car has an issue with overheating in summer.  blah! We'll see.

Fuel tank has a leak  along the seam and the workshop are hunting us down a replacement one. ( 2nd hand)
So as long as we can keep the fuel tank below half full we shouldn't lose too much fuel in the meantime. Of course we filled the tank to the brim just before we discovered the leak. It seems the best way to know we had fuel given that the gauge wasn't working.
At the moment the bill is sitting at around $100 for replacement bits and repairs including new wipers. A replacement 2nd hand tank is another 100 or so and all up labour around 150 so for the work done hopefully it will cost us around $350.  phew.  I was worried it might have been much higher.  That of course depends on whether they can find a 2nd hand tank in good condition.A bit of a relief as getting the ute was "my project" as Hubby keeps pointing out when I worry about things going wrong with it.


Finally a win
Yet another block down the road has been cleared for building and they had scraped back  all the top soil.  I couldn't help but admire the lovely rich colour and it seemed such a shame that they were going to truck it away so mentioned to Hubby that I wondered if we could get them to dump some of it at our place.  usually Hubby wouldn't be willing to go and talk to the guys but by the time I got to work yesterday not only had he been and had a chat to them but he'd talked them into giving us 6 big scoops of lovely soil delivered by dozer.  They actually asked if we wanted any more. If I'd been there I would have said yes please.  Anyway  we now have enough soil to complete the front garden ready for planting. woohoo. I just need to even it out and spread it to a few areas. AT NO COST!. I had mentioned to Hubby that he could offer to pay them but no money was required.  I guess they were able to save on dumping costs as Hubby said they spread was left out on the block. :)