DUE TO THE EARTHQUAKES THERE WILL BE NO FIELD DAYS UNTIL AT LEAST JUNE 2011
Although many members of the Canterbury TCA live in the countryside, at least 40% of the branch live in and around Christchurch; with quite a number of those in the suburbs that have suffered severe liquefaction.. To all of you who have suffered damage to your homes and gardens, the rest of us offer you our huge sympathy and best wishes. Because damage to the city is so extensive, it is obviously going to impact enormously on people's interest in anything other than getting the basic facilities of life back again. Therefore, it would be inappropriate for the Branch to 'carry on as normal', in the current circumstances. Ironically, one of the suggestions for a future field day in 2011 was to have had a focus on city TCA members' gardens.
We realise that TCA matters are probably the furthest thing from people's minds at this time, and also that many Christchurch members may not even receive this newsletter due to being dislocated from their homes. The following suggestion, although trivial, is 'tree crops' oriented, and occurred to me might conceivably be useful to a few members in the next few months; but I do realise it's not likely to be a very high priority in the scheme of things.
If any members are faced with having to relocate in the medium term or permanently, and therefore have to leave their fruit trees and shrubs behind, I'm sure that as a branch we can organise grafting and then temporary 'growing on' locations for anyone who has any 'sentimental value', or unusual, or lost-ID trees and shrubs (that they feel would be unlikely to be replaced easily, and would want some way of saving a 'snippet'). We can organise 'growers on' for anyone who needs their plants saved. Contact Krystina if you have some 'special plants' you would like saved.
So in summary, although it seems to be “another year, another earthquake”, Canterbury TCA is still alive and well, albeit in a 'resting phase' for the moment. On a brighter note, the one field day we have held this year, coincidentally two days before the earthquake, was certainly a 'goody'!
