Monday, June 7th, 2010
Warm winter greetings.
What a fantastic day we just had up the hill on Friday 4th June! Our first planting bee on the Matai Huka this year attracted over 100 people including 75 students of Te Ra school, Raumati South, with associated parents and teachers. The weather was so good I felt sunburnt afterwards and I reckon we planted 1300 trees to boot!
It was such a hectic day that I was not able to thank anyone properly. First we transported plants to and up the hill, then went to fetch the kids, and finally we put the plants into pre-dug holes and protected them from lagomorphs with hare sleeves. The pre-digging of holes was mainly done by the Hill Crew and the weekday volunteers during the week. We were entertainingly assisted by several PD gangs, kindly organised by KCDC’s Biodiversity Officer, Rob Cross. It was an education seeing the PD’s shirk but in between times they did haul a lot of plants up the hill and dig plenty of holes.
Tim Dredge has been with us all week, of course, and PK has been helping out loads despite a bad back. Annie Chapman and Tony Older came for the day which was a great help as did the Global Volunteers who were fantastic, as always. Last but by no means least:- thanks to Gay Hay for developing our relationship with Te Ra School over the past year and Mark and Ardis of the school for embracing our project. The kids took to the job like fish to water. Putting on the hare sleeves can be a bit tricky but there were no puzzled faces, they just got on with it.
A great day for all involved, thank you!
Joe