Acer Rubrum

When we first moved to our eight acres in this glorious part of the world, we planned to fill the paddock with an array of trees.  But we've scaled down our plans because our former neighbour is very pleased to have the use of the paddocks for his steers.  Steers and newly planted trees don't mix very well. So while the steers were in the bottom paddock, we decided to plant a maple tree in the top paddock.  But, before we got around to putting protecting it from the steers, there they were, munching happpily on the grass in the top paddock.  And on the plastic tag telling us what tree we had planted.  R managed to put the un-chewed bits together to get enough label to tell us it is an Acer Rubrum. 

So we decided to spend today putting up a fence.  I say we, but in reality R did most of the work. I held on to things and filled in holes and provided moral support mostly.  Some time ago, R purchased a post hole digger. It's fair to say this particular tool saved him hours of hard slog digging the holes by hand.  And what boy doesn't like a power tool right!

The digger in action

The first hole with the maple in the background

The digger does create quite a racket so we each have a set of "you can't possibly lose these" bright orange earmuffs to wear.   We put them down on the ground while we stopped for a drink and a piece of fruit.  Turns out, steers really like bright orange.  The biggest one started to make off with R's earmuffs.  No sooner had we retrieved the muffs, than he went for the bright yellow measuring tape. We could almost hear him muttering to himself, "Right, if I can't have the bright orange plastic thing, I'm having the yellow".  I had to chase him a bit to get that back.  There wasn't any more attractive plastic around so we settled back to our tea break.  But the steer had a very put out look on his face by then.  And he practically stomped over and started munching on the tree we were aiming to protect.  I swear, if he could have talked, he would have said, "So there, hmph!!".  I''m not sure how it happend, but I ended up with the steer slobbered ear muffs, which I discovered when I put them on. Yeuch.  Picture guilty steer sniggering in paddock. 

We finally got the pen finished.  Our neighbour tells us we still need to put some cross rails on to stop the steers pushing the fences over.  Thats a job for another day I think.  The posts for the pen were leftover from when the fence was replaced.  The rest is stuff we reclaimed from our local tip. It's amazing how much useful stuff one can find on a tip.  It makes us very happy to re-use and re-purpose stuff when we can.  So we're pleased with this small effort.

The steers did their best to look uninterested while we were putting the pen together.  But they stayed very nearby.  Obviously waiting to get hold of any plastic they could.  Cheeky!

The earmuff stealing steer.

That is our first effort of building some protection around a tree. We're just hoping it will hang in there until get to put the rails up.