Taking this Wednesday off

There will be no working bee this coming Wednesday 27th Oct. With the short week and excellent progress we are taking a week off.
The next Wednesday working bee will be on Wednesday morning 3rd Nov from 8.45am to 12noon. These morning only working bees are working out well. We all get home for lunch and find they are not too disruptive to the day.
If any of you are out walking check out what we have been up too. If you go down under the bridge on the St James Drive side you will see the work we have done on both sides of the bridge. Most involved the clearing of the creeper, Honey suckle away from native flora. On the south side in a blind gully behind No.62 St James you will see an excellent stand of Astellia Grandis (It looks a bit like flax and is over 1 metre high).

Our First Saturday Working Bee

Our first monthly Saturday working bee is this weekend Oct16th.
Time: 8.45am to 12 noon
Where: St James side of the walk bridge. Access is from beside either 64 St James Drive or 2 Grenache Place off Coleraine Drive.
What to bring: Your morning tea, gumboots, gardening gloves and either / or loppers, grubber, garden shears (no slashers please for safety reasons). Wear clothes that you do not mind getting dirty!
The weather looks fine for Saturday but bring a rain jacket if showery.
We look forward to see you.

Wednesday Working Bee
We had our second Wednesday working bee. We tidied up and cleared part of an old wire fence and cleared some dead gorse at the entrance to the bridge on the St James side. In the gully we planted 10 good size Kahikatea and uprooted more Honey Suckle.
There were some good positive comments from locals out walking.

A Field Trip for November

A field day has been organised to Peter Morris’s Matangi gully property on Saturday 13th November starting at 1.30pm. His address is 67D Fuchsia Lane which is right off Matangi Road heading south from Morrinsville Road. If it is wet it will be postponed to the following Saturday. Check our blog if in doubt.
Peter started clearing the gorse and planting natives in his 6 acre gully 30 years ago. You get a great view from his neighbours of the classical gully slope to swamp floor planting which you normally only see diagrammatically. The photos do not do justice to the view as the camera really needed a wide angle lens.
Peter also runs a small native plant nursery so there will be an opportunity to see various stages of seed raising of a number of our native species.
Note the date in your diary.

Wednesday's Working Bee

Four of us turned up for the first Wednesday working bee. We made great progress in brilliant weather by uprooting mainly Japanese Honey Suckle from an existing native flora area that was dominated by Astellia Grandis .
We would like to get the available Wednesday numbers up to about 8 to 12. Not everyone will be able to get along every week so we would have about 6 to 8 people on a working bee. That would get through a lot of work each week. The work is interesting, varied and very satisfying.
If you know of a retired, stay at home, out of work or work from home glide time person that would be interested please encourage them along or to ring Rex 854-0973 for more information. We gather at the foot bridge at 8.45am Wednesday mornings and finish at 12 noon. Get them to bring a morning tea for themselves. Gum boots are required at the moment as it is still pretty wet on the gully floor.

The picture shows an area cleared of Honey Suckle leaving the natives to flourish. The tree trunks in the back ground are Grey Willow. These will eventually be killed off to naturally rot and fall.