Well... the front of our house (and the back) is looking a little bit denuded at the moment. So many small trees and shrubs needed to be removed to make a path for the trenches of the pipework. I had moved a couple of the bottle-brushes beforehand... but for the others, we weren't too fussed as there quite a few trees both big and small. However, now that we are home again, and can see the vast expanse of dead space... well, it is time to start filling it in with greenery again.

Just looking around, I had discovered that there were two trees (one slightly bigger and one slightly much smaller) that the plumbers had uprooted with most of the root structure intact, and so I figured that I would (at least in the short term) use them to plug the hole in our front area.

... the hole in the front area. This used to be completely overrun with trees and shrubs... you couldn't see the road from where I took the photo! We had thinned it out, but it was still not this desert patch!

Looking back the other way, I also had to rebuild the rock retaining wall. IT is just a rough one, but I managed... phew, those bloody things are pretty damn heavy! The really big ones were thankfully put back in place by hte plumbers with the excavator. I'm pretty sure that there was absolutely no way that I could move those! However, the medium sized ones were still pretty damn heavy!

Slogging through and trying to dig holes for the trees was quite an ordeal. The ground on the top is a pretty horrific mix of rocks and clay-like soil. Digging with just the shovel was pretty hard with this mix... and so I had to start using a heavy mattock to help break up the soil before digging it out with the shovel. Of course, there area was still pretty thick with tree roots...

In the end, I did manage to get those two trees in... a good dose of water in the bottom of the holes and a healthy top up at the end... those trees had been sitting out of the ground for several days... the days were probably not so bad, but the nights have been below freezing... so, I'm not sure that they will survive... but I have been watering them every day... to try and give some a bit of a chance.

The larger one is a little bit dicier on the survival front. It seems to have lost its major taproot, and so there might be a chance that it is well on the way to being dead. The leaves are looking pretty dry as well in comparison to the smaller one.

Rummaging around, I found another little one... with no soil around the roots. It looks prety bad, but I will replant it anyway. There is no harm, and if I does end up taking hold, it will help hold up the soil on the top part of the retaining wall.

... starting to look a little bit better. My wife and her mother are going to go to the garden centre later his week to have a look at some fast growing hedge-like plants that might be able to give us a bit more privacy on this side of the house. At the moment, you just look straight into the carport!

... and after I finished up, I fund another three possible candidates for resurrection. These ones look definitely less healthy than the previous three... and there is absolutely no soil left on the damaged roots. However, I will try and plant them again... see what happens. If they survive, then that is a great bonus... if not, then at least we tried!

At the moment, of the six replants... I'm thinking that only one has a decent chance of survival... one with an okay chance... and the last four seeming to be completely long shots at taking root again.

Whatever happens to these budding trees, we are definitely keeping an eye on them... we are going to trim them down before they become a giant problem, and we are definitely going to take them out before they cause any damage to our house infrastructure!

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