NEITHER RAIN, NOR SNOW NOR SLEET NOR HAIL…STOPS A TREE PLANTING

So it turns out mud and wind are also no obstacle for Europeans coming to plant at Esdale.

We had to cancel this weekend’s  mass tree planting for a new Box Gum Woodland, for which we’ve had a grant from Local Land Services.  We’d hoped to have 20 people and plant 400 trees.   Instead we had strong winds and heavy rain, a swollen creek and slippery muddy tracks.

We let all our volunteers know.  Some of them were already laid out with winter flu, some them can come to our backup date next weekend, but some of them came this weekend anyway.

Saying, “This is like summer in the Netherlands”

 

It’s definitely not summer around here.  But we have  75 trees in the ground when we thought we might have nothing at all.

 

A woodland, it turns out, is not the same thing as a forest.  The trees are planted quite  far apart.  I’ve concentrated them at the top and bottom of the big slope (we were planting the lower ones).  The upper ones will form something of a windbreak for the paddocks on the other side.   The middle of the slope will only have scattered clumps of trees and shrubs.  The native grasses are already doing well here due to this area being rarely grazed in summer, and part of a big paddock the sheep tend to bypass on their way to the creek for water.

Note the flooded creek, and the bloke with a mattock (Craig) digging hole after hole, after hole.

 

Not only did they wear robot outfits, well knee pads, they smiled about it too…

 

 

In a few years, there’ll be a grove of trees here, that owe their existence to travellers from the other side of the world.