blog

Lament Our Trees

Posted: 12-09-08

We headed over to the section last week to check on the trees.

They've been eaten.
All 100 of them.

We felt so gutted, and not just because we'd put a few hundred dollars and a few hours of our time into it, but because it was just a bit "disappointing". I personally felt like I did when I had my car broken into.

We had bought some plastic wraps and metal steaks for a structure and placed these around each baby tree, but these defences were all-to-easily overcome by our floppy-eared invaders - Rabbits are my best guess. The steaks, which look like large croquet hoops that hold the plastic protection around each tree are all bent and each tree has been nibbled to around the same height.

My theory is that rabbits peered over the top, their weight bowing the steaks, with the limit of their reach the height at which each tree has been gnawed to.

We've tentatively decided to leave re-planting until we move up the coast to some rented accommodation once we sell our present property, as it's an hour's drive North each time we need to attend to stuff onsite.

In other news, I'm looking at glazing options for the new house. Kiwi's are big on aluminium joinery for some reason, even when Brits abandoned them en-masse in the early 80s in favour of lockable, double-glazed tilt-and-turn UPVC units. We need something that will not let heat out, moisture in and is double glazed.

In order of desirability in terms of aesthetics and budget are: Timber, thermally broken aluminium, and UPVC. As far as I know, UPVC is quite expensive, but perhaps not so much as custom made timber-joinery. I continue to hear bad things about the state of NZ thermally broken aluminium, but the search continues.