Van Stadens

Yesterday we bought the concrete mixer we had promised to Goodman a while ago to do very necessary work on the concrete gullies, planting poles and other maintenance work around the reserve. To put it together and hand it over was not quite in the plan for today but, on the way to the reserve, […]

Guest author: Rob Norton On Saturday 8th August I explored down the stream from under the power lines near the N2 down into the forest. Before reaching the forest it was noted that a large number of Port Jackson were present on the slope up to the N2, and they were coming into flower. A

I have been amiss lately to maintain this blog. Various reasons including lots of work at home with signage etc. which meant an overdose of Van Stadens with accompanying withdrawal symptoms. I will try and catch up but first here is a not exhaustive list (though just compiling it made me feel exhausted).

The week of bitter cold and rain certainly had its effect on the turnout for our monthly meet on a beautiful and sunny day. All six of us set out to walk the newly signposted 3Dam and Nymph trails. We made it into a slow botanizing amble, often stopping to try and identify some plant

I wish we could have this more often, 67 minutes of community service for Mandela day brought a group of Woodridge students to the Reserve and we got one group to work attacking the Podylarias under Rob’s supervision and another with Ellie and I creating some more paths in the arboretum. First they were welcomed

Well well, we were most pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the Reserve and found everybody getting prepared for a controlled burn. Never mind that it was a different area than the plan put out earlier this year bur firebreaks were cut and soon the fires were lit. Note the keurbooms in the background, it

Over the past few weeks we had prepared some logs to attach the trail markers to and today we set out to place them at the appropriate places along the Nymph trail. Hopefully we won’t have a fire too soon and, if it would be a controlled fire, we live in hope that the markers

2015.05.06 It was a milestone today with the last of the trees on the main picnic site having its branches removed. Slowly but surely we are winning   The trunk serves as a good separation between the rest of the picnic area and the Xhosa ruins so we may leave it there for kids to

The U3A (University of the third age) came for a visit today so Ellie took them for a walk to the Arboretum and back as their walking stamina was not quite up to scratch for more strenuous activities. They were very interested in what we all do in the reserve and learned amongst other things

As the monthly meeting is our only opportunity to get work out of people who cannot make it to our Wednesdays we decided to change the walk up Ladyslipper to rather get some order into the nursery, have early tea and then go and explore part of the forest on the western side of the