Ready to brave the dry season

April 9-13, 2007

This week we focused efforts on reforestation projects and the greenhouse. We’ve planted most of the trees from the greenhouse for this year and are beginning to think about growing trees for next year’s sites. With an initial goal of 2,500 trees for the coming year, we need to begin growing now (and collecting a lot of bottles to grow them in).

On Monday we collected bottles around town and then went to the greenhouse to dump our house compost. We turned decomposing compost to keep the process moving as well as cleaning out a lot of the weeds in the greenhouse.

On Tuesday we picked up some more bottles around town and prepared identification signs for our latest Bosque en Medio de las Ruinas (Forest in the Middle of the Ruins) site. Identification signs make finding our trees for watering easier and also serve to distinguish the site from the surroundings so that people passing by are aware that there is a project underway and are less likely to tamper with our trees. We put the signs up at the site that was planted with the Children of Ecuador group and at the same time improved the water catchments around the trees there. On Wednesday we did the same, but at the site we planted with the Canadian group at Bosque Encantado. These sites are now ready to brave the dry season, because they are loaded up with mulch and have circles to catch water.

On Thursday we went and watered the two sites, Maria Dolores and Don Pepe, which have the least shade and are the most exposed to the sun. A brief lull in the rain made us nervous for our trees there, but as luck would have it, that night it rained really hard.

In a light morning rain we went out and collected baby Samango and Algarobo trees from around Ricardito’s farm. Tons of small Samango trees are growing under two large ones on his property. We transplanted them from the ground and took them to the greenhouse where we made soil with our compost in order to plant them into 3-liter bottles where they will be grown until next year’s planting season. It was pleasant work in the cool morning and exciting to see the greenhouse filling up with trees again.

Hasta la proxima vez,

Clay