We held a working bee today, and did some bushcare (well…weeding!) at Nudgee Beach, in preparation for the World Wetlands Day music festival being held there tomorrow. While we were working, a hike, bike ride and kayak tour was going on nearby. Tomorrow’s festivities will include the arrival of our Japanese visitors from the Yatsu-Higata wetlands near Tokyo Bay. (See Feb. 2 post for info on our sister wetland in Japan.) They are coming to commemorate World Wetlands Day with us here in Brisbane, and part of their day is a walk around the wetland boardwalk at Nudgee Beach. We cleared out trash and weeds so that their impression of their sister wetland is a good one. We had a nice turnout, happy weeders pictured above with our spoils. Typically, for “environmental” weeding, you remove only flowers and seeds, to prevent reseeding, and leave the spent plants to break down into mulch, but in this case we were doing more of an “esthetic” weeding, and didn’t want to leave piles of wilted weeds hanging around. We also had a go at the trash that had floated in on the tide and removed what we could. Trouble is, more will float in from the next high tide! Oh well, you do what you can. I swear, every single thing was plastic.
The highlight of my morning came while I was weeding my “favorite” invasive species, Mile-a-Minute. I uncovered the mother of all root systems, pictured above. They are easy to dig out at this particular site due to the sandy soil. I got busy with it and unearthed what is probably a 5-year-old root system. It was worth the effort.
What a great crew!! Good Job!! That is the biggest root to plant I've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteYep Sarah, your fortunate with the sandy soil. You'd never get that root out with the adobe soil here! I know first hand :)