We're dreaming of a white Christmas......

We've woken up to snow on the hills three times this week already. Just on the tops, but that still means overnight lows well down in the single digits! Not such a problem for those of us with nice warm beds, but we're a little concerned for Rachael, Dave and Stephen who will all be in tents in our back yard in a week's time. Especially considering there's more snow in the forecast for Saturday and Sunday. We're doing our best guys, but no promises on the weather! Might pay to bring your winter PJs!



On a mostly unrelated note, we put up the Christmas tree the other day...

Sprung!!

"It wasn't me.... it must have been another cat that knocked off that decoration! Besides, playing with Christmas trees is for kittens and I'm FIVE now."

A view worth preserving

Last Saturday (the 28th), I (Andrea) volunteered to join in the effort to rid Ben Lomond of Wilding Pines. "Wilding pines" is the general term given to various pine trees that self-sow on the wind, covering the hills around here and squeezing out all the natives. The worst offenders are the Douglas Fir trees, but the list is quite long and includes pretty much every introduced conifer.

It was a nice day, and the thought was that I wanted to do some exercise anyway, so I may as well meet some new people and do a bit of good at the same time!

In this first photo you can see the two types of forest up on the hill. The bushier stuff in the foreground is native beech forest, with the obviously pointy pines in the distance. It's a bit of a losing battle but the efforts at the moment are on preventing the spread of the pines, rather than trying to rid the hills of all the pines. The dead brown trees in the centre of the picture are the ones felled last year, if you can see those!


This is the sort of countryside I was working on. The downside to being a bit fitter is that the group automatically delegated the steeper bits to me! You can see a few of the Douglas Fir seedlings in the foreground.




And here's a view up towards the summit - that's mostly Beech forest on the left of the photo.

It was a very rewarding day - they estimate that over the weekend about 11 thousand seedlings were removed. I'd believe that easily, I think I removed over 250 in my 5 hours, and there were about 50 volunteers on each of the two days. It was hard work though, and my arm muscles are pleased I only did one day!