Grafting and Maintenance, by Cory

 Between terms is a good time for catching up on some maintenance jobs.

Adding some barb wire or adjusting the fence where pigs sneak under or through and fixing a few places where cows broke through.

Pastor Ephraim's family does mechanic work.

He stayed on campus after graduation  with his young family and spent a few days fixing the college's old flatbed truck.

It needed some new engine bearings, a new starter and batteries.

The avocado field is growing well with some irrigation.

I grafted almost all of the avocado in the nursery and some in the field.

This is a good time of year to graft since it is like early spring, the trees are growing and the bark peels, allowing easy "T" budding.

Besides being easy and fast, T buds don't use much budwood, which I don't have much available.

Freshly grafted T bud

Chip bud sprouted on the right, cleft grafts wrapped and bagged to keep from drying out on the left.

We planted a few mangos during the dry season to see how they would do and they have made several spurts of growth during the winter despite the cool nights.

Also recently grafted.

Local seedling peaches are waking up and blooming at only 2 years old. 

The fruit from an older tree on campus are small and rather bitter.

Surprisingly tolerant of the drought, most of them never went completely dormant despite not being watered.

They should be tough rootstock for good varieties of peach, plum, and apricot.

Interesting wildlife in the yard.

The african hoope prances around in a jerky way.

The greater blue-eared starlings put on a show for a long time the other day that not only we enjoyed but a few curious chickens also came over to see what was going on.

Our Birds of Southern Africa book stays out next to the binoculars and the camera as we often want to look up the names of birds.

Today we also saw a hornbill, blue waxbills, bulbuls, fork-tailed drongos and more.