Wessa walk

Last week was too wet so Wessa postponed their visit to this Wednesday. Pity because it meant that the Grahamstown contingent of 15 people could not take part. Ellie very ably led them on a grand tour from the Flower House to the arboretum and suitably impressed them showing what we all have done.

I carried on with the shade house reconstruction, missing my ‘handlanger’ to dig out poles and levelling rafters but made steady progress nonetheless.

It is taking shape quite nicely, the heavy digging work is done and now I have to be careful not to be rushed into finishing it and rather do it properly.

We feel sorry for the interns, even though they were promised jobs at the end of their term this has not materialised and they will go at the end of this month. It’s a shame because they brought something extra to the Reserve and they have no other job lined up.

Goodman was on leave and the stand-in manager got the staff organized. To our utter amazement they marched off to the entrance circle and got the whole place weeded and looking good. They had to borrow our equipment to be able to do it though!

The Wednesday Walkers were also out in force, they did the combined Nymph/Forest walk so with them, Wessa and a steady trickle of visitors it was quite a busy day in the Reserve.

At 3pm we called it a day, me because I was knackered and Ellie because she wanted to find Leucadendron orientale. We found quite a few specimens around the arboretum though they are difficult to tell apart from L.tinctum, L.sessile and L.ulignosum for an amateur like me.

I enjoyed looking at the Leucospermum conocarpodendron and woolly  Protea coronata along the River walk

instead of trying to figure out if this is really L.orientale.