You can never have enough...

[kiwimade64]

Some of the trimmings are, mica, but not all. One of the trees doesn't make good mulch. And our friend said he could take the second tree down for less than half of the quote we received from the arborist. And that included grinding the stump and mulching. If we take the cherry tree down ourselves (which we planned to do) and leave the branches in a pile he will mulch them too. So, from $1000 down to $300, it was a no brainer to say yes please and thank you. He'll come in August when he gets back from his holiday.

Yes, the brain drain is real... our son is part of it. Once he started talking about buying a house in Perth, we knew he wasn't coming home.

I think you are right mica, with all these redundancies, the government does need to be careful who they lay off. Just how robust will their advice be... mind you... they won't listen to it anyway and will have to backtrack with no apologies. They say they aren't worried about the polls, but I think they should be. I think this slash and burn policy they have will come back to haunt them even with some so called 'sweeteners' in the upcoming budget. At least Labour tried to keep the civil servants employed.