26th February
Another day of constant amazement at the crew at work. Especially the ladies in the Nursery. We’ve moved on from the Soils Unit, and started doing propagation, and selecting mother stock for propagation.
At the moment we’re studying cuttings, soft/semi-hardwood/hardwood. The easiest way for me to show was to get a bougainvillea branch, with a soft tip, back to hardwood. The ladies wanted to know why we didn’t use the soft part for cuttings. In the 30 minutes from the time I took the cutting, to us talking about it, the ends of the branch had wilted, and even putting it in water didn’t revive it. Good demonstration, it stuck in their minds for sure. The Bougainvillea cuttings we took the other day and struck in the river gravel have started roots already, another week and we’ll be potting them up. Oh for a mist system for the shade house, we’d have cuttings to spare and more.
They got confused when I started talking about mother stock, so the best description I could give that they related to, was that our cuttings were the children, and if we looked after the Mother, the children would be strong, and grow healthy and quickly. Jennifer, Imelda, Annie and Susie are really good in the nursery. They work steadily, never complain, and are always thinking.
We had a bit of fun, the guys don’t like getting their hands in the dirt, working with the chainsaws, tools, bush knives, not a problem, play with the soil and mix? Not willingly. I mentioned it to the ladies while we were potting up, and Jennifer came back with, Men! we have the babies, cook, garden, clean, look after the children, feed the man, and all he does is laze around and go fishing, humph!
So I said, well, it’s hard work making babies, we have to rest up
All 3 of them threw clods of dirt at me, and chased me out of the potting area laughing.
Imelda and Annie spent the afternoon rubbing more coconut husks through the makeshift sieve we have, it’s just a piece of 10mm wire mesh from a building site, with a wooden frame. I’d love to get them to NZ or Australia to work in a well set up nursery, they’d be running it within 6 months, their work ethic is so good. That applies to all the crew we have.
My shipping finally arrived today. I’ve got towels! And sharp knives that don’t bend when you try to cut bread. And my fishing rods and reels! Guess what I’m doing this weekend?
Steve called out to the Gardens this afternoon to pick me and collect everything. He’d acquired a washing machine, with a bit of a problem, it could be broken drive belt, I should be able to fix it, so there goes the hand washing outside in the stone tub. I also scored a small benchtop electric grill and oven from him, he wasn’t sure if it worked or not, it didn’t, but it was only a broken wire in the plug, so that’s fixed now and all set to go.
Steve is the VSA Programme Officer for the Solomons, Bouganville, and Papua New Guinea, I’m just one of several VSA people he is responsible for. We were driving through Honiara, and he asked which areas we looked after. He said that he constantly sees our crews out in the town working, and looking happy as they work. It’s something I’ve noticed, all the crew take pride in working, who they work for, and doing a good job and trying to make Honiara look better.
I’ll let them all know what Steve said tomorrow morning, it ties in with what I constantly emphasize in class, and when I’m working with any of the crew.
There are a lot of unemployed youth in Honiara, it is the major problem here, and our crews from the gardens are the best advertisement for us. We get a constant stream of people looking for a job with us, because we have work, and also the fact we put them through Level 1 and 2 Horticulture certificates, which are a guarantee of employment here. We have to rely on donations for the cost of the courses, we need nearly $30,000 for each trainee to cover the costs involved, all of our assessments have to go to Brisbane for verification, although now I’m here we can do it internally. Thanks to the Assessors Certificate I got a few years back from Auckland University.
Most of the temporary workers, the ones that are on the Certificate course end up working for the large hotels, as gardeners on reasonably good pay, with constant work.
When there are people prepared to work as security guards for $4 an hour, at night, you realise there is a major problem looming. I’d be wanting $200 an hour, and my own AK47 to be a security guard at night here.
And a plane waiting ready to go for when it turned sticky.
I’ve unpacked everything, not that there was much, and got the fishing rods assembled and ready to go.
Printer works, and the scanner, so I’m all set up again.
There’s an old time revival meeting going on up the road at the Ba’hai School at the moment, a lot of shouting, clapping, Hallelujah, and singing. The main speaker is very heavily influenced by Billy Graham I think, with a mix of Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King. The music is good, and the singing, but not my thing.
I’ve got an early Bob Dylan cd on at the moment, actually not all that early, it’s Blood on the Tracks from 1975. Simple Twist of Fate, and Shelter from the Storm are the two tracks I like best on it.
A few more people reading this lately, Hi to Stef, Damian, Tarsha, Jesse and Kahu, Moira, Sally Kim, Christopher in Belize.
Realised today, I’m drinking 3 litres of iced coffee a day, and another 1.5 litres of water, and it’s barely going through my system. You really sweat out copious amounts of water here, walking breaks you out in a sweat, just standing outside is enough. You soon learn to walk and work at a steady pace all day, trying to rush is pointless, you get dehydrated so quickly. One good thing, I’ve lost 5kg since I’ve been here, still a few to go, but I’ll be down to 70 kg again soon.
Our swimming hole retaining wall is progressing well, the guys made a few more improvements to my suggestion, and now they are tying the tyres to each other, and putting an anchor tyre behind the front wall, and tying that to the others. Another load of steel reinforcing pins arrived from somewhere yesterday, I don’t ask questions, and don’t want any answers.
We’re getting more people coming out to see the gardens. The bush telegraph must be working well in town, a lot have not been to the gardens since the troubles, and they are really pleased with what has been done so far with the tracks, and the orchid house. I hope I can continue on with what Eric started last year.
I’m trying a sourdough bread recipe, I’ve got a very active starter going, from a really good website, http://www.joepastry.com/, if you like baking, and good advice, it’s the best one I’ve found. Tell Joe I sent you. Anyway, after following the recipe, and using a small plastic bowl, I’ve now transferred it to a large bowl, I get the feeling that 30*C and high humidity really make the yeast culture think it’s on steroids. It climbed out of the bowl and made a break for the floor before I noticed it. It will be ready to mix up tomorrow night, so I’ll have fresh sourdough bread for the weekend.
Pic for today is the coral hills around Honiara. I live behind the left hand end of the ridge going towards the sea. There are three distinct flat levels and possibly more, I’ll have to go for a drive further back one weekend, but I think behind the ones in the pic, it turns into volcanic and basalt base. There is a gold mine on Gold Ridge, I’m seriously considering panning the gravel in the stream when we start digging out the swimming hole.
Another day of constant amazement at the crew at work. Especially the ladies in the Nursery. We’ve moved on from the Soils Unit, and started doing propagation, and selecting mother stock for propagation.
At the moment we’re studying cuttings, soft/semi-hardwood/hardwood. The easiest way for me to show was to get a bougainvillea branch, with a soft tip, back to hardwood. The ladies wanted to know why we didn’t use the soft part for cuttings. In the 30 minutes from the time I took the cutting, to us talking about it, the ends of the branch had wilted, and even putting it in water didn’t revive it. Good demonstration, it stuck in their minds for sure. The Bougainvillea cuttings we took the other day and struck in the river gravel have started roots already, another week and we’ll be potting them up. Oh for a mist system for the shade house, we’d have cuttings to spare and more.
They got confused when I started talking about mother stock, so the best description I could give that they related to, was that our cuttings were the children, and if we looked after the Mother, the children would be strong, and grow healthy and quickly. Jennifer, Imelda, Annie and Susie are really good in the nursery. They work steadily, never complain, and are always thinking.
We had a bit of fun, the guys don’t like getting their hands in the dirt, working with the chainsaws, tools, bush knives, not a problem, play with the soil and mix? Not willingly. I mentioned it to the ladies while we were potting up, and Jennifer came back with, Men! we have the babies, cook, garden, clean, look after the children, feed the man, and all he does is laze around and go fishing, humph!
So I said, well, it’s hard work making babies, we have to rest up
All 3 of them threw clods of dirt at me, and chased me out of the potting area laughing.
Imelda and Annie spent the afternoon rubbing more coconut husks through the makeshift sieve we have, it’s just a piece of 10mm wire mesh from a building site, with a wooden frame. I’d love to get them to NZ or Australia to work in a well set up nursery, they’d be running it within 6 months, their work ethic is so good. That applies to all the crew we have.
My shipping finally arrived today. I’ve got towels! And sharp knives that don’t bend when you try to cut bread. And my fishing rods and reels! Guess what I’m doing this weekend?
Steve called out to the Gardens this afternoon to pick me and collect everything. He’d acquired a washing machine, with a bit of a problem, it could be broken drive belt, I should be able to fix it, so there goes the hand washing outside in the stone tub. I also scored a small benchtop electric grill and oven from him, he wasn’t sure if it worked or not, it didn’t, but it was only a broken wire in the plug, so that’s fixed now and all set to go.
Steve is the VSA Programme Officer for the Solomons, Bouganville, and Papua New Guinea, I’m just one of several VSA people he is responsible for. We were driving through Honiara, and he asked which areas we looked after. He said that he constantly sees our crews out in the town working, and looking happy as they work. It’s something I’ve noticed, all the crew take pride in working, who they work for, and doing a good job and trying to make Honiara look better.
I’ll let them all know what Steve said tomorrow morning, it ties in with what I constantly emphasize in class, and when I’m working with any of the crew.
There are a lot of unemployed youth in Honiara, it is the major problem here, and our crews from the gardens are the best advertisement for us. We get a constant stream of people looking for a job with us, because we have work, and also the fact we put them through Level 1 and 2 Horticulture certificates, which are a guarantee of employment here. We have to rely on donations for the cost of the courses, we need nearly $30,000 for each trainee to cover the costs involved, all of our assessments have to go to Brisbane for verification, although now I’m here we can do it internally. Thanks to the Assessors Certificate I got a few years back from Auckland University.
Most of the temporary workers, the ones that are on the Certificate course end up working for the large hotels, as gardeners on reasonably good pay, with constant work.
When there are people prepared to work as security guards for $4 an hour, at night, you realise there is a major problem looming. I’d be wanting $200 an hour, and my own AK47 to be a security guard at night here.
And a plane waiting ready to go for when it turned sticky.
I’ve unpacked everything, not that there was much, and got the fishing rods assembled and ready to go.
Printer works, and the scanner, so I’m all set up again.
There’s an old time revival meeting going on up the road at the Ba’hai School at the moment, a lot of shouting, clapping, Hallelujah, and singing. The main speaker is very heavily influenced by Billy Graham I think, with a mix of Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King. The music is good, and the singing, but not my thing.
I’ve got an early Bob Dylan cd on at the moment, actually not all that early, it’s Blood on the Tracks from 1975. Simple Twist of Fate, and Shelter from the Storm are the two tracks I like best on it.
A few more people reading this lately, Hi to Stef, Damian, Tarsha, Jesse and Kahu, Moira, Sally Kim, Christopher in Belize.
Realised today, I’m drinking 3 litres of iced coffee a day, and another 1.5 litres of water, and it’s barely going through my system. You really sweat out copious amounts of water here, walking breaks you out in a sweat, just standing outside is enough. You soon learn to walk and work at a steady pace all day, trying to rush is pointless, you get dehydrated so quickly. One good thing, I’ve lost 5kg since I’ve been here, still a few to go, but I’ll be down to 70 kg again soon.
Our swimming hole retaining wall is progressing well, the guys made a few more improvements to my suggestion, and now they are tying the tyres to each other, and putting an anchor tyre behind the front wall, and tying that to the others. Another load of steel reinforcing pins arrived from somewhere yesterday, I don’t ask questions, and don’t want any answers.
We’re getting more people coming out to see the gardens. The bush telegraph must be working well in town, a lot have not been to the gardens since the troubles, and they are really pleased with what has been done so far with the tracks, and the orchid house. I hope I can continue on with what Eric started last year.
I’m trying a sourdough bread recipe, I’ve got a very active starter going, from a really good website, http://www.joepastry.com/, if you like baking, and good advice, it’s the best one I’ve found. Tell Joe I sent you. Anyway, after following the recipe, and using a small plastic bowl, I’ve now transferred it to a large bowl, I get the feeling that 30*C and high humidity really make the yeast culture think it’s on steroids. It climbed out of the bowl and made a break for the floor before I noticed it. It will be ready to mix up tomorrow night, so I’ll have fresh sourdough bread for the weekend.
Pic for today is the coral hills around Honiara. I live behind the left hand end of the ridge going towards the sea. There are three distinct flat levels and possibly more, I’ll have to go for a drive further back one weekend, but I think behind the ones in the pic, it turns into volcanic and basalt base. There is a gold mine on Gold Ridge, I’m seriously considering panning the gravel in the stream when we start digging out the swimming hole.
The evening rain is back, not that it cools down much, but it does freshen the air
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