Things even out in the long run. The drought of the first months of the year came to an end, and June-July rainfall has been heavy. Then, it was too dry for planting. Now, we take the days as they come, and do what we can.
The Tuesday Group.
The conviviality of the Tuesday Morning Group has been reinforced by cakes from various sources. When Neville Kerr's hearing aid was lost, looked for, and found, he brought a "Thank you" chocolate cake on the next Tuesday morning. Since then there have been a banana cake, an apple cake, an apricot cake, and chocolate chippies brought by various members. It could become a habit. Brian offered a joke cake of a slab of polystyrene covered with chocolate and colourful hundreds-and-thousands, and invited Harold to cut it into slices....
But we have been working too. Recent jobs include:
1. At the abutment to the high-level bridge in Cook Street, weed mat has been laid and about a quarter of the planting up, has been done. We have tried a different idea with this planting, using large groups of the same colour to make a statement as we have used mostly flaxes to stabilize the bank and prevent erosion. Some filling in on the lower slopes has been done by a more athletic member.
2. Between the two bridges, on the south side of the river, much replanting is needed, in the area where large eucalyptus trees were recently felled. We refer to the area as "Riverview", one access to which is from Shakespeare Street, about half way up the hill from the low bridge. We have started planting up on both sides of Soldiers' Track, with trees on the upper side of the path and low-growing flax on the lower side, so that the view of the river is retained.
3. Below the Kauri Grove, we have organized the Corrections department teams to work. They have spent many weeks on clearing all the rubbish, and burning it off. Once we even had to call out the fire brigade, as the fire had got into a tree stump and kept going over night and as usual the weather forecast was wrong and the rain that had been predicted did not arrive until after the fire brigade had spent some time putting out the burning stump. Because the hill was very steep and sandy we have made terraces, and brought in topsoil, to make planting more sustainable.
4. The top edge of Gill Lumb Park was weed matted and planted. Poets Track had a patch where a willow had been cut down and mulched three years ago. This was now planted. The Steel Way had three visits with a truck-load of plants each time. We sustained some losses in the swampy part and we had not finished planting all the area last year. It is looking good in there now.
5 Carpentry: Bruce and his helpers have been busy in the Nursery Building, installing new shelving and tool racks, storage areas in the roof, and a dividing wall next to the kitchen area.
Bird sightings.
We rely on anecdotal evidence of interesting sightings, but the news is generally good, including occasional reports of a Kaka and of Kereru (wood pigeons), and Tui are seen all around town.
Maungakawa
There has been a big tidying-up job done by the "Friends of Maungakawa" They removed all the seedling black walnut trees that had come up since the old tree had been removed. More rocks have been put on the edge of the car park to keep the cars off the grass.
Donations.
The Tree Trust wishes to express its thanks for funding grants received from : Union Parish Shop, Hewitt Trust, Fonterra, Ross Greenwood Trust (Wellington), the "Centennial of Victoria Bridge" Committee, Masonic Trust, and Cambridge Rotary.
Tree Trust Web Page.
Visitors to the page may have noticed a few changes in the last couple of months. It is "under new management" since Greg Liddy passed the job of maintenance and updating to John Collett (//www.treetrust.org.nz/Newsletters/
Visitor counting is done by "mywebstats.org". They keep the counter running on the web page, and a lot more information can be obtained from their site if you are a registered user with a password. They distinguish between what they call "unique visitors" (different people) and "page views" (which may of course be by returning visitors).
In a recent check, visitor counts were 15 unique visitors for the tail end of the month of May, 38 for June, and 77 for July (up to the 20th). Page views were approximately double those numbers. If you follow the leads provided, "mywebstats" provides all sorts of other information about the use of a web page. It is surprising to learn that over 50% of visitors to the Cambridge Tree Trust web page are using Macs, while about 40% are using Windows. The main browsers used are Safari (28%), Internet Explorer (25%), and Firefox (21%).
Cambridge High School.
Year nine students will be starting on their science programme with us on the 12th of August. This includes a talk about the geology of the area and planting one or two trees each. We will be having two classes a week for the month so if there is anyone who would like help with the supervision of these sessions please get in touch.
