YOU can do something useful during your stay at home.
Natalie Rowles from Ashley has suggested readers send their photos of any type of insects, from butterflies to bees, as a task during lock-down.
“Having a garden here in Ashley, Pinetown, it has given me the opportunity not only to ‘farm’ with vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, but also to record different insects visiting my garden, like these photos I’ve sent off to Michigan USA to be identified, which now will appear on their website with the photographer’s name on it too, (visit: https://www.knowyourinsects.org/Odonata1.html).
ALSO READ: Mission accepted! Meet Highway Mail’s junior blogger
“These photos will help in the research world-wide on insects and this was my idea to help them along too,” said Natalie.
Also send your photos of insects to michelled@dbn.caxton.co.za as jpeg attachments – at least 1 meg, and we will publish them on the website.
We asked Natalie to share her greening life
We have been residents in Ashley, Pinetown for 52 years, and I have tried to create a garden from cuttings, indigenous seeds and then later heirloom vegetable and herb seed.
The front garden has endured for three years now without being watered as such, and most plants survived, having been sustained with my own mulch and worm compost.
On the one side is my row of indigenous real Yellowwood trees (three males and one female).
ALSO READ: #Covid19Lockdown: Online meetings for addicts provide hope and recovery
The female is now in full seed production and over the years I’ve collected annually about 3 000 mature seeds that have dropped onto the lawn which I’ve sown, grown and donated for free to schools the municipality, the public, nature reserves and forests etc.
During the first five years, I’ve donated more than 3 000 saplings and received a ‘Greening The Future’ award in The Mail & Guardian newspapers’ National Competition in 2011.
I’ve donated another 6 000 saplings over the years afterwards, even to Hogsback, to be planted in their Yellowwood forests to save the highly endangered Cape Parrots, to a farm and to Injisuthi Nature Reserve and to schools all over the place.
All done with this wrinkled old pair of hands, with no sponsorship helping me, but just the urgent desire to get these saplings all over KZN, especially here in eThekwini to turn our municipality into a City of Yellowwoods – like Pretoria, known as the City of Jacarandas. I also want to try and save the few hundred of wild Cape Parrots and attract them back to Durban.
Each seed has got a red ‘cherry-like’ fruit attached to it that the birds loved to eat and afterwards, the seeds will fall to the ground, ready to be collected and sown by myself.
Earthworm compost
Twenty-five years ago I bought a lot of Eisenia Fetida composting earthworms from a South African university to create organic compost to grow my own food crops using my green grass cuttings, leaves, kitchen peels and egg shells, which produced the best compost ever.
I’ve harvested fresh vegetables, herbs and fruit on a daily basis for my family and we basically survived from what I grew in the backyard, so this lock-down is no problem to me, as I am always at home and growing food crops.
I’ve also tried my hand to help my KZN rural communities for a couple of weeks in November to December 2011, by teaching them how to plant vegetable gardens and sharing my composting earthworms with them, so each 20 persons in each group in various areas, went home with their own wormeries which they could sell to neighbours if they wanted to, with my instruction to them to ‘each one teach one’ .
I gave free talks regarding these worm farms locally, to the public and at schools.
Blue flowering reeds visited by bumblebees
Caxton Local Media Covid-19 reporting
Dear reader,
As your local news provider, we have the duty of keeping you factually informed on Covid-19 developments. As you may have noticed, mis- and disinformation (also known as “fake news”) is circulating online. Caxton Local Media is determined to filter through the masses of information doing the rounds and to separate truth from untruth in order to keep you adequately informed. Local newsrooms follow a strict pre-publication fact-checking protocol. A national task team has been established to assist in bringing you credible news reports on Covid-19.
Readers with any comments or queries may contact National Group Editor Irma Green (irma@caxton.co.za) or Legal Adviser Helene Eloff (helene@caxton.co.za).
Do you want to receive alerts regarding this and other Highway community news via Telegram? Send us a Telegram message (not an SMS) with your name and surname (ONLY) to 060 532 5409.
You can also join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
PLEASE NOTE: If you have signed up for our news alerts you need to save the Telegram number as a contact to your phone, otherwise you will not receive our alerts.
Here’s where you can download Telegram on Android or Apple.
