Amazingly, we’re done with our main project for 2018!
After the bitter weather on our big planting a few weeks ago, I was worried we’d never get our whole Glossy Black Cockatoo project finished. Thankfully, Darren Menachemson and a wonderful crew from ThinkPlace plus a Greening Australia “Adopt a Plot” team came to our rescue. Continue reading
After months of flu last year, I was very excited when Ben Hanrahan from Greening Australia offered help with planting our new Glossy Black Cockatoo area on the steep gully behind the house.
It’s been a dry year so far, with only scattered amounts of rain making the soil just moist enough for planting. Mostly we’ve had sunny days and warm temperatures.
We’d ripped and fenced and prepared for the arrival of the mystery volunteers. Ben didn’t say who they were, just that there were lots of them. But as we waited for the buses to arrive, the sunny morning began to sour. Matthew ran around putting rocks on each coir mat to keep them from flying away. The piles of pink corflute covers heaved and flapped against the heavy weights we’d put on them.
Looking at the surging clouds, Craig, Ben and Matt began digging some “demonstration” holes, to shorten the planting process.
Then the rain came down, just as the two big buses arrived. Continue reading
I was quite cautious when the idea of a “Green Army” was proposed. It seemed like a political stunt. And the cost of the payslips was going to be subtracted from Landcare, a community organization I admire a great deal.
Who was this Army going to attack? The trees? Us?
Who was going to join up? Willing people? Or grumpy teenagers who’d rather be playing video games, only moving when they were driven along with pitchforks?
And how would they feel about planting in rocks?
Last weekend we planted in two different directions at once. 
We finished the final small tree lots that are part of the chain of connections across the Murrumbidgee river for small birds. That makes nine tree lots for connectivity only, plus two extra areas, a shelter paddock that used to be a calf-feeding area, and a decorative one that will have an avenue of white trunked eucalyptus mannifera at the entry to Adnamira . The two extras will act as bird stepping stones as well. Continue reading
