Spent the morning with Adrian. He’s Australian. From Queensland. His work method with the crew is to shout, if they don’t understand, he shouts louder.
I’m not impressed. After 4 hours with him, I felt exhausted. Everything here gets done at a pace that doesn’t suit him, the heat and humidity have a lot of influence, you don’t run here, especially in the middle of the day or afternoon, and even more so when you’re wearing overalls, work boots and working in the middle of a tarseal road with traffic, and no shade. He has or seems to have no regard for the crew taking a few minutes off to grab a quick rest under some shade when they’re doing the median strips, or the garden edgings in town. Add in the constant “Don’t do anything unless I tell you” commands, I’m fighting an uphill battle if I hope to get most of the crew to be self sufficient and working for themselves in 2 years.
I’m still working on the Heritage Hotel landscape plan. It’s a nightmare of a thing. We needed a years notice to bulk up plants, now I’m having to source good size specimens from another Kastom Nursery west of Honiara, who have Native land title, and pull the plants out of the bush, and charge accordingly. $450 and up for 1.8 – 2.4 metre palms and trees. Keithie isn’t impressed, she doesn’t want me dealing with them, or more to the point, she doesn’t want the other nursery getting any of the income.
I’m working on it till this Friday, submitting my plans, sketches, prices, and letting it go. I’m falling behind in what I’m meant to be doing, with the Gardens and the Nursery here.
Steve called in today, well, late this afternoon. I’ve finally got covers for the foam squabs for the chairs and 2 seater wooden couch. He’s had them sitting at his house for a month, after getting cleaned.
I’ve found what to use to clean the trees up in the Memorial Gardens, white spirit, or paint thinners. It’s going to be interesting, we’ll have to wash the thinners off the trees with detergent, and lots of water, before we can start grafting. The heat will be evaporating the thinners quickly, so I’m picking there will be a few dizzy people with me there. The ant barrier glue was meant to have been applied over a separate plastic or builders felt layer, to allow the tree to grow. An expensive lesson for all. But good grafting practise for the students.
Steve is setting up a meeting with the Minister for the Environment later in the week, or early next week for me. It is frustrating trying to get answers and decisions about the Gardens with so many different groups involved. The Honiara Council have title, the Forestry Commission are meant to be overseeing, the SEB are the ones taking care on a voluntary basis. The Council don’t want to know, we’re just a bunch of tree hugging lentil munching hippies as far as they are concerned, the Forestry Commission would love to clear fell the entire Gardens, after which the Council could put houses on the land. I’ll try to convince the Minister to have the Botanic Gardens put into Government ownership, we may not get any money from it, but it will solve the disputes and ambiguity.
It’s a bit like making an omelette, you have to beak a few eggs to get something good.
I had 2 hours with XXXXXXX and XXXXXXX, I’m not going to be able to put up with the patronising attitude for long. It’s almost as though they can’t accept that “these people” may have different aspirations, or abilities and may have different ways of working things out, or have other ideas about what they want.
Adrian wants me to go to the Yacht Club with him and meet the “important” people in town. I’m putting it off as much as I can, from what he’s said, they are the people who have “the white mans burden” attitude to the people I work with. After a couple of drinks I’m just as liable to start making a few remarks of my own.
It’s going to be funny reading back over this in a year or so, looking back at the problems that are here now, and I’m wondering what it will look like further along the track.
Planted out my silverbeet, chillies tonight in the rain, I got soaked coming in from the truck to the house, so carried on and dug over a new patch of soil, cleared the grass off, broke the soil up, and planted 10 of each.
Everything else is growing well, a bit leggy, I may have to try a new place, although I’ve not got a lot of ground to choose from. The mango trees shade everywhere, it’s a choice between fresh mangoes, and sunlight. Still, better than not being able to plant anything and having to wait for warm weather.
Pic is of a Delonix regia with a Carallia brachiata growing through
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