Make do and improvise

Setting into isolation is a strange beast.

There's a weird similarity to Christmas. At Christmas the shops go nuts and then everyone stays home and it's quiet.

It's definitely not Christmas. In part it also feels a little similar to my experience of a natural disaster too.

We have a national state of emergency, there's a greater police presence and we're likely to see the army at some point, it's the early stages so people are caring and working together, there are idiots out there, the media and social media fuel fear, and toilet paper is a hot commodity.

During the earthquakes I learned to improvise. I achieved a lot with cord and I'm applying that knowledge now.

I have remedial work to do on some trees that are subject to windy conditions plus a replacement tree to plant and stake. I discovered that I'm low on the webbing I use when staking trees. I'll save the webbing for the new tree and for the remedial work I'm improvising.

I also discovered that I'm low on sturdy twine and duck tape. I joined together several short pieces of rope and used double thickness twine to give me enough length. Duck tape on the stake keeps the twine in place and will stop the wood from cutting through the twine.

My aim was to reduce root damage due to movement when it's windy. There's only so much I can do to secure the existing stakes further because of rocks deeper in the soil. My third stake set up has achieved my aim for now. Only webbing touches the tree. I've tensioned the rope against the webbing so it can't damage the tree.

My emergency kit has a hank of decent cord for the rest of my remedial work. A kind friend picked up a new roll of duck tape for me on Tuesday.

That's a lesson for me. My emergency kit usually has a new roll of duck tape in it. At some stage I flogged it because my everyday roll had run low and I forgot to replace it.

Work-wise everything was smooth today. We had a video team meeting and it was good to be in contact with everyone.

Today's gratitude: For a beautiful warm and gentle day.