Nursery Species Thrives On-Site

1st Feb saw a return to the site. The first for a while. Great to chat with the villagers, who of whom one had managed to break his leg on his motorbike and was suitably plastered. [Cultural learning # 76; people in Thailand seem not to write on plaster casts.] After the usual banter, where I form the butt of most jokes, and deservedly so, I headed down to the site.

Sadly, over the course of the November sojourn to the UK, all the metal rods were stolen from the site, marking out the control areas and test planting plots. These worked really well, not one moving from its position, nor dropping a rope. But they proved too tempting for someone and have not been seen since.
The good news was that not only were almost all the plants doing well, but the last experiment with Sesuvium on E2 was also thriving. Sesuvium portulacastrum is a stringy herb that likes full sun and is quite happy with salt. Goats also love it. Its utility in this context comes from its stringy nature. The herb it is good at trapping various mangrove seeds and propagules as they drift past on the water. This is useful here because the land is too low and the water at highest tide is at least at hilltop level. So when the rainy season (starts April-ish) brings the new seeds it will be interesting to see if any seeds get caught up in the Sesuvium.

Having inspected the plants I only wanted to get back into the rhythm of digging, so repaired channel 2D, added to G2 and formed a new hill (H2). Needless to say, then next morning was a slow start, feeling as though I'd been run through a mangle.