It’s been another good week here. Cherry
blossoms are in peak bloom and everyone is taking photos of them.
Last Sunday
we attended Operation Nature Day at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens and went on a guided
walk with the curator of the New Zealand section of the gardens.
Our guide showing us the lancewood tree |
The small tree on the right is a lancewood tree that has very long spiky leaves when young to discourage predators from eating them. However, when it grows older and taller it starts generating regular roundish leaves.
One of the Operation Nature Day display
tables had stuffed possums and stoats, two of the non-native mammals that
destroy native bird eggs and kill the young birds.
Australian brushtail possum - about 3/4 of the size of North American possums |
Stoats - they're like our weasels |
We’ve been
tramping with Cindy’s group on Thursdays. Last Thursday was a beautiful sunny spring day to be on the Crater Rim trail
in the hills around Christchurch.
View of Lyttelton harbour from the rim |
Cindy and her tramping group |
Cindy has
been volunteering at the Harbour Food Co-op in Lyttelton one day a week. The co-op is tiny and is like co-ops in the states used to be years ago (bags of beans with scoops, buckets of bulk items,
funky wooden shelves and floor.)
This
Saturday we took part in a Plantout day as part of Conservation Week. We joined a bus load of people and spent the
day planting native plants at 3 locations.
At the end of the day we met up with two other bus groups for a dinner
and music to celebrate the planting of about 4500 plants. This is part of a “Greendot” project organized by the Kakariki Trust to
establish a corridor of native plant areas on public and private lands which will
also aid native birds.
One of the empty plots before we started planting |
Planting in progress with protective sleeves put around each plant |
The end result - over 1000 native plants at this location |
And for
cuteness factor – this little boy was helping his parents plant, and found a
worm which he proudly displayed.