Lisa’s Wish Visit—19 – 22 October 2018

This past weekend was a long weekend in New Zealand as we celebrated Labour Day.

Our good friends the Knapman-Smiths – Ian, Neil, Rosemarie and kids Cort and Nikita—who established the Lisa’s Wish Grove, decided they wanted to have a full on Labour Weekend and made a huge contribution to CUE Haven and the Lisa’s Wish Grove by doing some major spring cleaning.

They spent a lot of time doing some general maintenance work in the Lisa’s Wish Grove.

A lot of vegetation was growing over the track and Ian, Cort and Nikita trimmed it right back.

Trimming the big flaxes requires patience and the right technique.

In the meantime, Neil loaded up the weed sprayer and took care of some of the weeds and grass emerging along the roads and tracks.

Rosemarie tackled some challenging weeding in the Lisa’s Wish Grove.   Some of the memorial kahikateas needed to be cleared of weeds and morning glory vines.

She painted the morning glory with weed killer to keep it from spreading this summer.

Two of the memorial kahikateas were quite close to the boardwalk and as they will grow up to be huge trees, Ian decided to relocate some of them deeper into the wetlands.  It was a hard and messy job.

Rosemarie also spent some time in the nursery, organising the plants and doing some weeding.

Now you would think that would be enough, but they cleaned up inside as well!

And washed the windows in the cottage:

Believe it or not, they did take some time to relax.

They also went for a night bush walk and found some new glow worm colonies and enjoyed a great spring weekend at CUE Haven.

Our heartfelt thanks to Ian, Rosmarie, Neil, Nikita and Cort for all their hard work this weekend and for accomplishing so much. We really appreciate your help and assistance and so appreciate your commitment to the CUE Haven project.  Rosemarie, thank you also for your generous gift of homemade organic marmalade for our volunteers to enjoy.

You are always welcome at CUE Haven and we look forward to continuing to develop the Lisa’s Wish Grove in the coming years.

Thanks again!!