A group of A Rocha members gathered at the Southern Star Monastery at Kopua over King’s Birthday weekend to join with the Cistercian Associates and others to do further conservation work at Kopua-riki.
Helen B, Lynn and Richard N arrived early and spent some time on Thursday doing some work at the site. Richard has a small area within the original A Rocha patch which he cleared a couple of years ago and has worked on since. This year he released the surviving trees and planted a few more. Meanwhile Helen and Lynn worked to clear more English Ivy from another site. This ivy has to go under the terms of the QE II covenant.
Most of the rest of the team arrived on Thursday evening ready for a work day on Friday. The team planted trees on the bank above three of the Stations of the Cross These include 50 purchased with Caroline William’s generous donation. The plants were from Tararua Native Plant Nursery as they are eco-sourced. Altogether the team were able to purchase 6 Titoki, 10 Hebe stricta (Koromiko), 6 Wineberry, 10 Manuka, 6 Cabbage Trees, 6 Akeake and 6 Coprosma robusta (Karamu). We also bought tree protectors for the ones that hares might eat! A farmer, Peter MacKenzie donated wool to use as a mulch, so that was also applied, and the trees were watered after planting. The rain forecast for the few days after our visit will be very helpful. Now we have planted this area, on our next visit we will prepare a new area for planting, as well as releasing the trees we have just planted.
Later in the afternoon some went and checked on previous plantings while Terry, Lynn and Helen B went and cleared some more ivy.
Rachel arrived late on Friday ready for work on Saturday and on Saturday the A Rocha team was expanded with the arrival of Mo and Kirk. The team then joined with the Campbells, the Associates and Kopua whānau for the day’s work.
After a karakia, work started on Saturday morning. Some of the Associates and Kopua whānau went to a future planting site to split some logs. As this was a noisy event involving the monastery tractor the rest of us went to work along the tracks below the hermitage to do some weeding and releasing. As we went, we gathered bamboo stakes which were no longer needed. We also had a look at previous plantings and assessed where future in-fill planting could be needed and which areas needed to be properly prepared and planted.
After morning tea most of the combined team went across the road to the future Suzanne Aubert Forest to weed out Spanish broom. Most of the plants were small enough to be pulled out, roots and all but some of the bigger ones needed cutting and pasting. The tall weeds sometimes made it hard to spot the smaller broom plants.
After lunch the group split up again with some going to site bamboo poles to mark where trees would be planted at Matariki. This was in a burnt over area near the road on the monastery side. Others (mostly A Rocha members) planted out a steep slope overlooking the pond with trees that had been sourced at Kopua-riki and nurtured by A Rocha Manawatu in their plant nursery. This was a steep site but was successfully planted with no mishaps. Again, the new trees were supplied with woollen mulch and marker poles.
After Mass on Sunday morning Irene, Terry and Helen B set out to doing five-minute bird counts at each of the four stations. This is a different time of year to our usual counts which we do in April and is also additional to the one we did at Anzac Weekend.
Helen B stayed over at the monastery until Tuesday and on Monday did some more English ivy clearance.
We were blessed with sunny calm weather every day with the rain holding off until the Tuesday. The A Rocha team enjoyed the weekend as the following comments show: –
“Thank you for all the good planting and nurturing and fellowshipping that you contributed to over the weekend.”
“A most enjoyable and fruitful time!”
“Thanks for the very enjoyable and well organised time at Kopua. It was a blessing to work with the team.”
“Indeed, a great few days of planting & fellowshipping. A very enjoyable time together….”
“It was very satisfying to see all those plants in the ground, and very enjoyable to spend time together in fellowship.”
As usual the members of the A Rocha team attended worship with the monks at different time of the day, mostly Mass in the morning and the evening services.
