Monday, November 5, 2012

Nurturing New Growth



New growth in the Firewheel Tree
 
It's been a dry dry spring since we planted our trees along the creek at Ninderry. Heavy mulching and bucketing water from the creek is seeing them through while they put down new roots to help them grab on when the flood rains come in a few months.
And wow, they're putting out new growth!
The brown pines have a whole new layer of soft lime green.
 
 
 
Brown Pines shooting forth.
 
 
It's incredibly rewarding to see trees respond to your efforts of dragging buckets of water from a creekbed. My little 3 year old grandson has been beside us all the way, lugging his bucket.
 
A rainforest baby.
 
Black Bean, Crows Ash, LillyPilly, Paperbarks, Eumundi Quandong and Palms are all doing well. We've not lost one.
Alex has worked like a Trojan and grubbed, pulled and chopped out the Camphor Laurel that was choking and poisoning the creek and the forest. Such a huge job. And now the light reaches the forest floor and the baby trees below the canopy. And they're loving it.
 
The creekbed at Ninderry...cleaned out.
 


 
So the creek is pretty low now and we're looking for early storms to replenish the remaining pools. Now that the Camphor Laurel is gone, we can see the baby native trees that have been struggling for some light. There are lots of little flame trees springing up, no doubt delivered thanks to Nature, from a neighbouring property.
Resident scrub turkey is just about swallowing one with enthusiastic nest building.

 

Baby Flame Tree



 
Scrub Turkey's footwork.
 
So far so good with our Tree Challenge efforts. It's a joy to watch them grow.