I never thought I’d be wanting to cut gorse.  After my earlier gorse harvesting exploits I thought I’d never want to pick up those cutters and set to again.  However needs must.

The good thing about gorse is its burning properties.  And, with a pile of thistles to burn we needed some fire accelerator.  Yes I know petrol, tyres and other such things would have helped us  build a fire but we wanted some controlled burning.

It was hot enough without starting a bush fire today!

You may remember that we planted out some natives back in July.  This shows the area we were gorse harvesting in today.  Looking back at those pictures our natives look like they are struggling right now for new growth.  I hope that perhaps the autumn rains will help with that.

Here’s a sight for sore eyes though.  MT hard at the gorse collection.  Luckily we have our new tractor and trailer to do the hard graft.

This is where we were transporting them to to fuel the thistle fire.

I know it looks worse than before. There is method in our madness though.  The added bonus of gorse harvesting (or rather the only bonus) is you can reclaim part of the garden. You may look at this and think – err, yes and your point is – but believe me that this was full of gorse before!

Look closer though – look what I found today.  This is a fern tree I never knew was there.

OK, I admit it.  I took lots more photos of this lovely fern tree.  Lots of close ups and from different angles.  I do realise however that one picture is normally enough for you to get the gist of things!

Here’s my mother-in-law inspecting the new found garden.

You can’t tell from the picture above that my mother-in-law has shoes in the same colour to match her shirt.  Very fashion conscious!

Here’s what the bassets thought of all this hard work.

Yes, I know, I need a better zoom lens but I’ve got to get the hang of these buttons and dials first!

Even without the bonfire it’s been a scorching day here at Domestic Executive HQ.  After a  hard days physical labour it was good to be able to watch the sun go down.  Oh, alright.  It was a good excuse to keep practising with my new camera.

Here’s the clouds lingering in the valley during the showers this evening.

Here it is a few minutes later.

And here’s the sun finally going down over Kaitoke hill.

And lest you think I had forgotten my fern Christmas Tree obsession.  Think again. This is right in my own back garden – or rather just over the fence!

And, just in case you are wondering.  No photoshop on these snaps.  Just straight from the camera.  How cool is that!