Plant Mercenary

It’s the year 2067, I’m sitting in my living room, in my worn arm chair, in front of a crackling fireplace, smoking a long wooden pipe,  surrounded by my grand children. My arms bear the marks of past battles.

“Grandma, how did you get all these scars?”, my eldest grandson asks. Memories of thorns scratching my legs and piercing my skin flash before my eyes. Growling, moaning, cursing; I hear my companions’ exclamations of pain as if it was 2016 again. I inhale my slightly stale tobacco and close my eyes.
“Children, it’s about time I told you about the great gorse war of Waitawa”

Thorn in my side, and arm, and leg, and everywhere else

This week, we fought, we bled, we killed. Gorse, of course, not other people. As volunteer, you start feeling very passionatly about plants. I now experience pure joy, utter excitement when I see an aromatic Manuka or a pale Kauri or a sharp-edged Upokotangata in the woods, and get filled with hatered at the sight of gruesome gorse or naughty Nightshade. And I’m not joking or exaggeratingbb when I say we bled.
Gorse tries to scratch out your eyes with Satan’s spiky leg hair and mocks you with its yellow, sweet, coconut-scented flowers. If you cut it, it will naturally fall over, usually either on your own face or your teammates’, who usually don’t apperciate that a whole lot. I was wearing long sleeves, but gorse doesn’t care, it just pierces right through the fabric. My arms and legs are coverd in little red puncture wounds that look like a gross contagious rash. I didn’t even notice how much I’ve been scratched; I was so passionately killing it that I didn’t care how hard the vicious bush tried to fight back. The second day, I just wore a short sleeved shirt since it was quite warm and I didn’t care about getting scratched anymore. That might not have been the smartest thing to do, but I prefer thorns over sweatin to death while working. Now I can’t enjoy my new Lush-Shampoo-bar since it smells almost like the horrid xanthous atrocity.
 Nightshade is a disgusting weed that sheds poisonous little particles that get into your lungs and eyes. It just shoots up as quickly as possible without developing a good rooting system first and steals the light from the poor, little, native plants with its large leaves to get rid of any competition. Get to the top first, worry about the foundation later, doesn’t that sound familiar? At least they are easy to rip out.

Maybe I sound like I hated the work this week, but honestly, I’m not complaining, I loved it, this week was probably my favourite yet. It’s just so satisfying to walk up to a big gore bush, take big loppers, cut it down, and then kill it with poison. I am not a big fan of just using weed killers and poison, but if you just cut these weeds down and leave them there, they will come back to life and just grow there again, and the last thing you want is a bunch of zombie plants to deal with the following year. We also weeded some flower beds, which was not as physically exhausting as attacking thorny bastards with dull tools (we had one good pair of loppers that cut through inch-thick stems like a warm kife through butter, but the rest was absolute crap), it was just annoying and boring and just not as much action.

Go there, look for weeds, kill everything bad. It almost felt like we were plant mercenaries.

“Over there”. The ranger points towards some wetlands eastwards. “Kill every single one of them”. My partner spits onto the swampy ground. Our boots have  almost dried in the spring sun, they are now covered in crumbly mud.
“Even the little ones?” He asks while slowly filling a spray bottle with bright blue poison.
“Especially the little ones. All  you find. Don’t leave any witnesses”. The deal is made. We  don’t ask why, it doesn’t matter how, as long as they are dead the rangers are happy. I take my loppers and adjust my hat.
The ranger wishes us good luck. She looks us in the eye; she know we will be changed people once we return; if we return. We walk towards the rising sun and mentally prepare ourselves for a fierce battle. In the distance, I can hear the ranger’s voice
“Have fun!”

What we got to see every morning - neat, right?

Don’t be trashy

One afternoon, we cleaned the beach. Again, it was not as satisfying as killing the big weeds, but a very important job. Mainly because (some) fishermen are lazy bastards who just throw away their rubbish, including the line and hook and glass beer bottles, at the beach or tuck it under some rock. It’s very frustrating. Looking for tiny transparent pieces of plastic is not easy. Please, if you ever go fishing, take your damn trash with you. Otherwise I will know, and I will come for you while you’re sleeping. I just hope I never catch anyone littering anywhere again – for them. It’s not hard to walk the ten meters to the next trashcan or to just put it in your bag of pocket. And every piece of plastic, no matter how small and insignificant it seems, will end up in an animal’s stomach at some point. Would you like to catch and eat a fish that has ingested a bunch of plastic?

Health and Safety Hazards

We all know that rules are there for a reason. That’s why we wear bright reflective vests to avoid getting run over by a car when working on a random hillside in the middle of nowhere. That’s also why we only do safe tasks, like climbing up and down on steep, uneven slopes with sharp cutting tools and poison in our hands and trying not to fall over all the logs or spraining our ankles in rabbit holes while wandering though hip-high vegetation. That’s why we don’t do anything really dangerous, like swimming at a sandy bay without a life guard. I really could not do that with good conscience.
In all seriousness, I get why there have to be rules. It’s just a bit sad that we didn’t get to swim  at the beautiful beaches right by our little park cottage.

A yellow-withering graveyard lies in front of us, the ground is covered it dying gorse. My shirt hangs in shreds from my scratched up body, torn to rags by the brutal defence of the enemy. Yes, we are tired, thirsty, and aching, but we did a good job today. We did what needed to be done. I know that these memories will haunt me for the rest of my life. I will not be able to look at nature the same way again. Yes, it was hard, my arms are tired, my legs are sore, but we did a good job. I let my eyes wander over the battle field and take off my sweat and dirt-stained gloves. Death and destruction, that was our gift to the otherwise peaceful little meadow.
“Now the little ‘nukas will be able to grow and get strong again” I mumble in grim satisfaction while I pull a thorn out of my hands. I know that my partner feels the same way. He looks at me, and,  as he tries to hide the horror he experienced behind a smug smile, says: “Veni, vidi, occidi, that’s how we always do it, Kat, veni, vidi, occidi.”

After work , we visited the Hanua waterfalls on Wednesday, and Hot Springs on Thursday. It’s just a warm swimming pool that smells of Sulfur, doesn’t sound like much, but it is really relaxing.
On Tuesday night, we wanted to have a little barbeque. There are grills on the beach, and cooking and eating food while watching the sunset at the seat is maybe the cheesiest, most holiday-thing ever. I prepared some mushrooms, tomatos, and potatoes in the oven, and an other volunteer took care of the meat. Everything was nice, we were running a bit late with the cooking, since the tiny oven didn’t cook all the food well enough, but that didn’t matter too much. We then went down to the beach at dusk, turned on the grill and set the table. We waited for it to get hot. We waited a long time. It didn’t get hot. The one nearby didn’t work either. They were out of gas; I suppose that’s just our luck. There was another one a few minutes away, so we had to find it in the dark, get all our stuff to the other table and warm up our vegetables in the house again, since they got cold during the hour of waiting for the grills to heat up and figuring out what to do. We didn’t get any food until ten, but the good thing was that at that point, we were all so starved that it tasted like the most heavenly meal ever. I love these parks, we were simply away from everything. Just us volunteers, who became good friends surprisingly quickly. I guess that’s what happens when you are with a bunch of weirdos 24 hours a day.

The day after we cleaned up the beach, I walked back to the house along the coast with my fellow volunteer Emily. Some other volunteers finished work a bit earlier and left before us, but since I can never let anything go and, yes, I will get this little piece of plastic that is firmly stuck, even if that means moving around five heavy rocks and dropping one on my foot, we just continued. Conservation work is kind of addicting, you just can’t stop collecting trash or killing gorse once you start. Even though it was getting late, we wanted to take the walk as well. Our team leader Amanda told us that the tide might be too far in to be able to walk all the way, but we thought whatever, there were a good two meters of sandy beach at the trail’s starting point, it was going to be fine. And it was, for the most part. It was a absolutely lovely walk. The sun was shining, the rocks were warm, we smelled the fresh sea air. We also saw a dead goat full of maggots rotting on the sand and tons of gorse and giant nightshades. In my opinion, the latter is worse, by far.
At some points we had to climb over trees or walk through ankle-deep water, but it was just an easy stroll. A few meters before the last beach at which we would have to walk up a road to the house, we stood before a choice: Climb on the steep, rocky cliffs and risk falling into the sea and getting our boots wet like true adventurers, or take the boring way around the cliffs by climbing up the hill, go back like true quitters. You probably know which way Emily wanted to go, and what I talked her into. It was fine. Totally. I went ahed, trying to show her that it was just a short, easy climb on the rocks. It didn’t help that the rocks crumbled away under my feet and I lost grip and had to step into the water halfway there. I guess she didn’t apperciate my attempts to push her to follow me, but she did it anyways. That was the most fun I had in ages! I love a bit of danger, and the chance of actually falling and hitting our heads on the sharp rocks was, more or less, quite low. We made it, though, and no one died. Emily told me that she had been scared back there and that she thought I was absolutely crazy, but again, it was fun. When we got back to the house, we told the others about our endavour. Appearently, they had taked the easier way over the hill. Cowards.
Now my boots are a bit less dry than convenient, but if I think back, they haven’t been totally dry since I left Austria. And this was only the third time that I completely dunked them into the sea since then.

Scenic Showering.

I have lived in several different houses in New Zealand, and , to be honest, they have gradually become less and less ideal. Truby King House in Wellington was great, there was nothing to complain about, the Atiu Creek Cottage was alright, but very dirty, you could say filthy. The Auckland house in Titirangi is okay for two people, or maybe a small family, and the Waitawa house had a bunch of cockroaches, dead and alive. I really wish I had never looked under the beds. The fridge was also far too warm, so our meat and milk spoiled and the ice cream melted. Since we had nowhere to get rid of the rubbish in the park we had to live with the stench of rotting mince in the fridge for the last day. However, I somehow came to like the place. Even the showers. Of course it was not clean there either, a month ago, I would have been utterly grossed out, but now I’m used to it. The windows in there didn’t completely close, so got to enjoy the cold breeze. And the water pressure in New Zealand is generally quite low, and gets worse if you turn up the temperature. So I could either have warm water and not freeze, or actually have enough water to get clean. The windows in the actual shower cabin, the one that does not close, is also completely see-through, so that you can watch the sheep on the pasture and listen to their baa-ing while showering. I mean, I’m not complaining, it wasn’t on my bucket list, but I am glad I had this experience. I actually liked the house more and more during the week. Maybe, because for once, we had nice weather almost all week. And it was warm! For some reason, the towels still don’t get dry over night. I am not even sure when I was completely dry for the last time. Isn’t humidity supposed to be  good for your skin.Next week, I will be at Atiu Creek again, and then on Waihiki, an island. For the weekend, Xandra and I (btw, Hi Xandra’s mum!) are going to Paihia, which is north of Auckland at the Bay of Islands. I wrote this blog entry on the bus, so that explaines why it is so long and detailed.

My grand children look at me in awe. “So you actually fought in the weed wars, Grandmother?”, my sweet little grandson asks.
“Yes, my dear, I did, but that was a long time ago. Now I am old, and that’s all in the past” I smile at them. I am glad that I was able to leave all of that behind, at least mostly.
“Have you really killed all of them? Even the little ones?”
“We did, we wiped them out, so that they will not bother anyone again, and you little ones can live in a world without gorse”
“But there are still some bushes!”
“Yes, I saw some, with spikey thorns, and yellow, coconut-scented flowers, just as you said! Look, out there!”
The children seem to be certain. I get up, breathing heavily, and walk over to the window. I haven’t actually looked out there for years, I couldn’t bear the thought of spotting any weed. I brace myself, I feel an adrenalin rush, my heart hasn’t beaten like that in years. I don’t want to, but I risk a glance. My eyes aren’t the best anymore, the pale veal of grey star lies on them. But they wouldn’t betray me like this, so I know it’s true. Yellow dots, on spikey bushes.
I imagine what it would be like to kill this thing, the creaking of the cut stems, the crackling of falling branches, but I’m too old for this. I know that the gorse might actually win this time. Still, I have no choice. I do what I must do. I take my old, rusty loppers out of a dusty wooden chest, gorse wood, in fact, and sadly smile at my former  partner’s picture on the fire place.
“We might meet again soon, old friend”