Wednesday 26th August

Wednesday 26th August

I just realised how fast time is going past. I know I write the date here, but it really doesn’t register till I look at a calendar and it’s nearly September, and I have another course starting the week after next. Or it may be the second week in September, I’ll have to check again at work.

Tuesday just drifted past, Tiffany and I spent a bit of time costing the next course to try and make some profit from it, but it’ll be a close run thing. I spent a bit of time going around tying tags on the Heliconia I had names for, and some of the ginger plants. I had Andrew looking at me in disbelief over the Zingerber zerumbet, it’s the shampoo ginger. There is a huge clump of it by the lily pond coming into flower, you use the sap from the flower heads as shampoo. I could see by the look on Andrews face he wasn’t sure if I was just winding him up as usual, or was being straight. I think he is convinced now as he heard me saying the same thing to Jennifer and Imelda in the Nursery later on.

I wandered over the tracks again yesterday, just checking the state of everything. There is a large Ficus down over the River Track, blown over during the storm on Saturday. It’ll take the crew about 2 days to cut and clear it all up. And left a big hole in the canopy above as well. It bought down most of another tree as well, and cleared a space down to the river.

Tiffany told me at 2pm today if I wasn’t too busy would I mind attending the Governor Generals Staff Certification Ceremony at Government House. She was meant to be with me as well, but with David down with pnuemonia, and Tessie still sick with malaria and pnuemonia, Tiffany isn’t having a good week.

It was a good gathering, a lot of food, all the staff got their passing grade certificates. The whole course was run by Tourism Solomon Islands, everyone had units from greeting guests, to food preparation and serving, and gardening. I was talking to the gardeners when I arrived early, as usual, I’m not up to speed with Solomon Island Time entirely yet, and they wanted me to go back for more teach and show. I had a word with the lady who runs the Tourism Courses, and I’ve got 2 more afternoons to go back and go over the practical stuff with the crew there.

Which is good, I rushed them a bit last week with stuff, so getting another couple of days to spend there will help them all. Plus it’s a gorgeous place to be working, full of frangipani, hibiscus, bouganvillea. And overlooking Iron Bottom Sound out to the Florida Group and Malaita. There’s a lot of pruning needing to be done, the Frangipani are hugely overgrown, with broken branches, dead heads, and just a tangle of stuff. I’ll be keeping most of the pruning for the nursery, there are some really good colours in there. Pinks with yellow centres, one is almost orange with a pink and white tinge, and a few with deep pink and yellow/orange centres.

Stage 2 of the Rove Prison job is as close to finished as I can wait for. I’ve got 10 hibiscus and 25 bouganvillea to go into the area, but I haven’t got the prisoners to work with for another week at least, and as they want to be the ones planting, I’ll just keep the plants at the Nursery till David lets me know when to go back. The 2 big Delonix regia trunks we planted last week are weeping at the top from the cuts, which is good, they should be sprouting by the end of next week. It’s amazing watching them come back from being transplanted here. Especially when you know all they are is just two long trunks without roots or buds showing.