Working on the section.

Saturday morning Sarah and I headed off to Wrightsons in Porirua and bought ourselves a pair of back-pack weed sprayers and a hoard of chemicals designed for killing gorse.

It's a complicated process.. there's the 'Tordon' herbicide, then a penetrant chemical that helps the spray to stick to the gorse better. We also purchased a blue die that when added to the mix stains the gorse blue so that you can see where you have sprayed, ..saves going over the same spots more than once. However it does stain everything it comes in contact with blue. Luckily it washes off! There were a few anxious moments after a leaking fitting on my sprayer stained my hands completely blue.

It was a real test of my fitness levels working with 15kg on my back in 26 degree heat. I found that I could work at a constant rate and I was fine but if I had to walk up an incline or extend myself in any way my heart would start racing and I would have to sit down for a few minutes.
It didn't take me too long to work out what was a safe pace to work at.

Total time taken by Sarah and I to completely spray the building site and the 130 metre long driveway was 4 hours. We used just over 100 litres of water/herbicide mix. Luckily I have a friend that lives nearby who was more than happy for us to use his hose to refill the sprayers and water containers.

Hopefully from here on out we will just have to spray every six months to a year to keep the gorse at bay. They say the seeds can last 30 years in the ground. ..Could be a long term job!
Things are slowly coming together with the building of our new house and workshop on the site, and we hope to start construction in about 8 weeks.

I have been given appointments for a CT scan, kidney function test and pre-transplant assessment. There's only ten days till I start the high dose.. scary. However I still feel good and have no outward signs of Hodgkins.
The only problem I have is with fatigue. All of a sudden I will feel incredibly sleepy. This can be at any time of the day. It's a bit annoying but will slowly go away as I recover over the next 6-12 months.