04/10/2026
Today we held our October work party.
Five volunters (Vera, Chris, Mel, Bob and Rohan) managed to drag themselves out of bed an hour earlier than usual, to help improve the wetlands.
Our original plan was to water all our recent plantings which have struggled a bit in the dry spell that we have had over the last few months.
But that plan had to be thrown out because the heavy rain that we have just had over the last couple of days (60mm according to Bob's rain gauge) made watering unnecessary.
So we decided instead to make the best of the wet ground, by weeding out the planting bed just near the Templestowe Bridge.
This bed has done really well since we planted it a couple of years ago, with both the number and variety of plants surviving both being high.
We also noticed that there was a lot of insects (bees, moths, beetles, etc) present there which was an encouraging sign that the bed is becoming good habitat for them.
However the mulch we used to suppress the weeds has now started to break down, allowing the weeds to return.
So we slowly pulled out the weeds by hand while having fun chatting with one another to make the time go by.
The bed now looks much better and really shows off how well our plantings are doing.
We also hope to remulch this bed in the next month or so to prevent the weeds reappearing.
Thanks to our great group volunteers for all their work.
