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Thursday, August 23, 2012

A day well spent

Robyn and I were up and away early this morning, planting and pruning fruit trees all around the rohe. First up, an early childhood centre, where the tots gathered about us like quizzical penguins as I dug a hole in their playground. 20 minutes later, at the teen-mothers centre, those first-time mums did the same thing, though this time, they did the spade work. Cue TV filmed for the 5:30 news. We then drove to Gore and the Hokonui Runaka marae, where we helped the taua put their plums, peaches, apples and nectarines into that good Hokonui soil, before heading to Wyndham school to prune their 3-year old apple orchard, and to the rest-home in the town to deliver their apple and plum trees. Gorge Road school was next and there we talked to the whole school about the Open Orchard project, showed photographs of the old orchards we'd collected the heritage tree scions from, then we all trooped out to a corner of their playground to plants half a dozen apple trees and prune their memorial crab-apple tree. By late afternoon, we were on our way back to Invercargill in time to meet the energetic crowd at the Glengarry Baptist Church and help them to plant their church grounds and the nearby shopping centre out with apple trees. By the time we'd finished pruning those and discussing all sorts of other issues around building communities, it was dark.
I call it a day well spent, and now, I'm spent.

Cue cameraman, with shadow

Awful cubed shrub, Wyndham

Tin fence and wooden shed, Edendale

Bereft tree, Seaward Downs

Tin fence, Gorge Road

Entirely bereft scarecrow, Gorge Road









4 comments:

Shunda barunda said...

Busy bee.

Wellington looms, will I fit in? been invited out for dinner an evryfink!!

robertguyton said...

Don't take your own knife and fork, Shunda. They do it all fancy in Welly. Plus, wear trousers.

Viv K said...

Go u guys!
Sounds like you’ll be turning Southland into the garden of Eden.
My cousin up north works at a nursery, her boss let her have good root stock at cost & she has grafted old family plum trees on. She has sent me three, including the ‘red driveway’ plum and the ‘clothesline’ plum (cos it held up 1 end of the line for many years) - cool eh?
Hope the trees handle the transistion from Palmy Nth to East Otago.

robertguyton said...

'Red driveway' and 'clothesline' sound great, Viv. We have similarly-named trees: Mrs Grant's last Stand (she put he body between her favourite cooking apple and her husband's bulldozer), Rennie's School Apple (favourite for cooking classes at Rennie's school), Dipton Redburst (a roadside from from Bill English country, with a splash of colour on it's crown) and so on. Lots of descriptive fun reading through our lists. I'm taking trees up to Dunedin today, though it's a bit out of our zone. An old chap there is enthiusiastically waiting for his Peasegood Nonsuch etc. Mustn't disappoint :-)