Weed Control

I spent the last weekend before I moved out of the city was at a volunteer project for Weed control in the Edward Hunter Bush Reserve. It basically meant we were to cut and poison the stump or pull out the roots of plants that are considered weeds to Australia. Some of these included:
 - Bulbil Watsonia
 - Cotoneaster
 - Black Berry.

I wish I'd taken photos of these thingies to share here but I didn't carry my camera so just added links to other websites instead.


The first one.. Bulbil watsonia is a bulbular plant that actually has such pretty bright orange flowers that it felt really sad pulling the plant with its bulbs out.. especially those with a lot of blooms on it.. I had to fight the urge to bring home a few bulbs that i'd plant later.. But I gave in and brought a few bulbs home anyway.... When I did get back I ealized two things.. 1. I was moving to another city on a flight and so each gram of things I was carrying counted (I ended up having to pay $150 extra for 10kg over the baggage limit but that's another story) and most importantly... 2. I spent two whole days of my life doing so much manual work as I'd probably never done in my entire life puling out plants that were weeds to Australia... planting the bulbs for its beautiful blooms totally defeated the purpose of the whole activity and the awareness it was supposed to bring about if one of the volunteeres/promoteres of shunting introduced plants classified as weeds wasn't able to fight the desire to remove them.

So that was the cute aspect of the weeding.. the vicious one was to cut the blackberry bush out... The bush is really really nasty with bigass thorns.. I silently vowed I'd never eat any blackberry products again.. When we all got back to camp the first night after all the weding I told everyone how vehemently I hated the blackberry bush and most other volunteer girls expressed feeling the same. By the end of the second day I was so overcome by all that we had done that on the way back in the van everytime I saw the bright orange out of the van windows my brain said weed weed weed!

It was a fun trip. I saw some really cool orchid varieties like the 'Little Tongue orchid' that looks just out of this world and the 'Hyacinth orchid' that's got no leaves just one stalk coming out of the ground with these beautiful lavender flowers on it. I even spotted a spider on a Blotched Hyacinth Orchid bloom that had lavender spots on it and so perfectly camouflaged there. Here're some photos I took on the  with my phone camera which I don't think are that great: