Moving On

I have not had much time for writing over the past week, as we are moving house next week, so I have been busy packing things ready for the shift.

One of today's tasks was to dig up a couple of Camelias and a Rhodadendrons. Our house is going to be demolished after we leave, because the government has decided that the land cannot be remediated following the earthquake, so I am going to try and take them to our new home. They do really well, here in Christchurch.

I dug round the roots a couple of weeks ago to get them used to a more confined root area. They survived that without complaining, so today I lifted them out and put them into containers ready for moving. The sun was shining brightly, after a couple of days of fog, so it was nice to get outside.

This is the largest one.

I tied a crowbar to the trunk and used some blocks of wood to lever it out of the hole. While it was hanging in the air, I wrapped a tarp around the roots to keep the soil and moisture in. Here is a close up view.

It is the middle of winter here, so the plants are fairly dormant, so they should move okay. We get frosts, but the ground does not freeze.

The main challenge will keeping the water up to them in the spring, when it gets drier. This Camelia is a winter flowering variety, so it might take the shift a bit harder than the others.