December 2004 - Margaret Suman

Volunteers
We are so grateful for the volunteers that help us at the nursery every week. We simply couldn't get all that we achieve done with out their help. In a rough count of volunteer hours we figured that this year they add up to the equivalent of a full time person. So at Christmas time we took time out to thank them by giving them a special party lunch.

Our volunteers are so dedicated that they wouldn't just come for lunch so we had to let them work through the morning while we set out lunch for them. It makes a change from the canned tuna, eggs, or peanut butter that we generally all share. And with our volunteers nothing says thank you like a cream cake! We love their suggestions and good company and hope to see many of them back next year.

Our youngest volunteers

Now that it is school holidays our children have joined us out at the Nursery. It is great having them out there and as this is our busiest time of year its lucky that they like being out there too. Sometimes they help us with our work and sometimes they bring some of their own projects to work on. Even a skateboard or two have found their way to the Nursery with some creative jumps and ramps set up well away from the plants. We can't tell you how lucky we are to be able to work and have our children along side us learning about our passion. And much to our surprise we have some darn good nursery workers in the making.

Portobello School Visit

Back in June Portobello School came to the Nursery and repotted many of their plants from 2003 as well as taking some of the larger ones back to their own reserve. This month we finally had the opportunity to visit their reserve and see the years of work that has gone into it.

Their revegetation project has been running for 20 years now and each set of children that have come to the school contribute and leave their mark during their time there. There are trees with names on them and more than that why the individual who planted it, likes it. And everyone has at least one tree.

There were no shortage of volunteers to show us around and it wasn't simply to get out of class because it was break time. The group we talked to knew every plant and every space in the reserve and the whole experience was very humbling. We think we are pretty passionate about what we do but these guys beat us hands down. They have also incorporated the study of yellow-eyed penguins into every part of their curriculum and we took the time to view a power point presentation some of the students had made of the nest boxes they had constructed and erected for birds on a local breeding site.

It was great to see the plants we had given them being so well cared for. The most amazing things was that they were just regular young people not special or privileged but they believed in what they were doing. They believed they had the power to make the world a better place and in doing it they felt good about themselves. When you saw the positive power a project like can have it really enthuses you to get out there and find the way to give more kids the opportunity to experience it. -Portobello school and teachers we stand in awe of you!

DOC Conservation Corps presentation

The most recent Conservation Corps students graduated this month and gave their individual presentations about their 6-month experience working with DOC. You may remember that they have set up a space at our Nursery too grow on their own plants for the Boulder Beach Reserve. We attended their presentation at the DOC office and Anita thanked them for their work at the Nursery as well as at Boulder Beach. We will look after their plants and seedlings over the summer break and when the next group of Con Corps start in February, we will plan another set of work days with them.

Mainland Products Ltd family winner
There are four family prizes for the Mainland "Help Our Hoiho" competition to visit Otago Peninsula and see yellow-eyed penguins. Recently we assisted Mainland with the school winners.

The Kinleys from Christchurch were the first winners to visit and they chose to bring their grandchildren. Mainland flew them into Dunedin and took them on a guided tour to see not only yellow-eyed penguins but also the Royal Albatross, NZ Sea Lions and fur seals.

Part of their tour involved a visit to the Nursery where we had the opportunity to show them what we are doing at the Nursery and discuss our conservation efforts. We love talking to people about our work and never run out of things to say. We are finding we are using the nursery more and more as a base to host people as it provides us with a space to talk about penguin conservation without being on site on the reserves and disturbing birds particularly during the breeding season.

Weather
2004 has brought one of the coldest Decembers on record and it has really slowed the growth rate for our tiny seedlings and older plants. This has made reporting our work at the nursery difficult because everything is not growing as it usually does.

The encouraging news is that although slowly it is all happening and we will just have to hope for a warmer January. We already have plenty of plants to plant this coming winter its just their size that could be improved.

We also have to constantly be looking ahead and we have already started the 2005 season seed collecting. There is still lots of coastline that needs revegetating.

Here's hoping everyone has had a wonderful Christmas and the best for the coming year.

Cheers

Anita and Margaret

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