So as many of you know, I'm working in the Botanical Garden on Statia. The gardens are beautiful, I live there with three other interns and 8 volunteers. I'm currently the only American. Everyone else is British, Dutch, Canadian, Scottish, and South African. Everyone is very friendly and has a lot of different interests and are here for different reasons.
The botanical gardens are very pretty, but they take a lot of time to maintain. Unfortunately, there is an introduced species calle Corallita, which takes over everything. It is a viny plant that grows up and chokes the plant that it is growing around. The interesting part about it is, that it has many tubers, like potatoes so it is impossible to cut back. You have to dig it out of the ground. The only part that doesn't really have it, is the Quill, which is the dormant volcano on the island. Unfortunatley, the ferral goats eat the plant and then spread it around the island. However, if you were to capture a goat and take it to the meat market, it would probably be claimed by someone. The goats have free rein of the island as to the cows, chickens, and pigs.
My main job is to take care of the Fruit Garden which was set up by the previous interns and to help set up the Children's Garden. The Childrens Garden has all the plans set up, and I will be looking online for some material to make things for the playground. The funding finally went through, so they are pushing to set up the Children's Garden as soon as possible. The Fruit Garden is very pretty, with many pineapples, mangoes, and cocoa plants. But Corallita is alreay starting to strangle some of the pineapple. I think we might work on that on Maintenance Monday, which means all the interns and volunteers get together and work on a project that needs a lot of attention.
