Repotted

A massive working bee at Old Government House yesterday.  One small part of it was the re-potting of this palm.  We don't know when it was originally planted, but we do know that it was on the verge of death when we took over the garden.  We've watered and fed it, and it's responded by taking on a new lease of life.

There are four storage areas at OGH.  There's the ATCO -  a hut which used to be the gardener's office when the Dept was rich enough to employ a gardener; there's the tin shed; there's the gardening shed and there's the black hole.  The ATCO was cleaned out by one team, and now houses all our paper records.

Then there's the tin shed.  Another team has tackled that, thrown out a whole heap of junk, and moved the gardening equipment into it.  We can now see what we've got, which is a big step forward.  There are stacks of chairs and tables t the back of the tin shed, and we are going to move them into the erstwhile garden shed, once it's got concrete pavers in it.

And finally there's the black hole.  Basically what has happened is that various people over eons have stood in the doorway, and chucked all the excess whatevers, and the broken bits and pieces as far into the back of it as they can.  And walked away.

So a large team donned gloves and face masks and dared to venture into the depths to clean it out.  There were more than enough junk to fill a skip, but there were treasures as well. (Three people on the team are antique experts). They couldn't possibly finish the job yesterday - there's at least two more working bees in it.  Filthy job, it's overrun with rats and spiders (hence the masks and gloves), but it was  a lot of fun.  Yes, it was, honestly.

An eagle-eyed worker spotted a long lost cast-iron water fountain at the back of the shed, which was really exciting.  I should have taken a picture of that instead of the palm, but I forgot.