On a bright and beautiful Winter’s Sunday afternoon, six of us met at the North entrance of Porter’s Scrub Conservation Park for our regular monthly meet-up. This time for weeding, especially looking for broom and gorse; but also, and most importantly, to plant out some maroonhoods. More of which later.

After the usual cleaning of boots, we set forth with buckets, secateurs, glyphosate for swabbing, the maroonhoods and other gear, heading for the exclosure.

We found about 20-30 gorse, 1 broom plant and some African Daisies, all of which we dispatched. Upon reaching the exclosure, we found a spot that was sheltered but would receive sunlight, making it a suitable place to plant out these small native orchids. Pterostylis pedunculata, in case you are interested…

I have been growing the maroonhoods for a couple of years, and they have multiplied to such an extent that there were enough to plant out safely in the exclosure. It was so exciting to dig some small holes and plant the orchids, most of which have about five leaves on their rosettes. Well, I thought it was exciting, anyway.

As we had previously noticed some places under the fence where some critters had dug and crawled into the exclosure, we were taking no chances and constructed a small, 30cm fence around the babies; of chicken wire and canes, so as to keep whatever-it-is out. We watered them carefully.

At the exclosure, we also emptied the rain gauge. 99mm! Yippee! This is the accumulation of about 2 months’ rain, so we were well pleased. Given that there would have been some evaporation, this was terrific.

We walked around to check on all the other plantings which were done over the past 2-3 years. Very sadly, and because of the drought, many had died. Especially sad were the last remaining Banksia marginatas, which had survived to about 50cms and then died.

We also understood that some plants might simply be dormant.

We continued up the track to where the monitoring stations of Clover Glycine (Glycine latrobeana) are and found some small plants doing well. Good stuff. Time to return to our vehicles, and on the way we heard and saw Crescent Honeyeaters and had a great close-up of White-throated Treecreepers. Also in evidence were the usual mobs of parrots.

Back at the vehicles, we were treated to coffee and cakes, kindly prepared by our Fearless Leader, Ellen. Orkun, our local Ranger, also brought a banana cake and rumour has it that this is a most unusual occurrence……….. Very yum. Happy daze.In all, a productive, but sometimes sad outing. It is always a salutary thing to be reminded that Nature can be harsh..

Liz