Working in the nursery...

Nursery from elevation

There are many things happening in the P&G at any one time. The department’s planting objectives are to beautify the landscape view around the zoo, to improve the microclimate and macroclimate of the landscape, to reduce noise with vegetation, to provide a source of animal food, and to promote and preserve the rare fruit trees, as result much of the work revolves around the nursery.

When I went out to the nursery for the first time on Tuesday, I was introduced to the two women who take care of everything within the 2-3 acres of plants. Starting that morning, I began assisting with the maintenance and propagation of the plants under the guidance of these two women. Unfortunately, they don’t speak any English. So from this point out, if I refer to being instructed by one of the nursery women to do something, you can be assured that what  that really means is me participating in a very modified version of charades where I am demonstrated physically how to do something with some Malay interjections along the way that I do not understand. Luckily, I am pretty good at context clues and reading what people could be saying based on body language. All thanks given to the people I interacted with through the years who did not share a common language with me.

Heliconia plants after trimming

 After participating in this demonstrative dance and being left to the tasks at hand, you can easily see how about five minutes into working, I start to be slightly concerned I am doing something wrong.  A prime example was when I was taken to where a variety of large Heliconia plants were, and I was shown to remove dead/dying/discolored/damaged leaves to the base of the plants. Soon after beginning this, I came to a plant that only had discolored leaves.  An inner quarrel soon followed starting with self-doubt, “Should I cut them off? What if that kills the plant? Maybe I misunderstood how discolored the leaves needed to be to warrant cutting them off? What if I have been doing this wrong the entire time?!” Then followed by self-assurance, “I totally have been doing this right.This is what she showed me to do. Since all the other leaves were discolored to the same degree, at least I would have some consistency in my non-prejudiced clipping. It should be fine; the nursery ladies just cut all the branches off those other plants this morning.” This is the most extreme example of concern.  Others doubts were brought on by more trivial issues like “Maybe I didn't need to weed this neighboring section…” but in all cases my doubts were removed or ebbed when the inspection of how I was getting along was met with a thumbs up and a couple of head nods. I would like to reassure you that in the specific example above, any concerns I still had were gone when we began dividing some of the same species of Heliconia, in the afternoon, and one of the nursery ladies brought out a machete and chopped off the tops of the plants. Whew!

Heliconia after being re-potted

Despite the lack of verbal communication between these two women and myself, I rather like them, and it does appear that they like me. They act very much like aunties, constantly motioning at me to take a break with them, motioning for me to sit down, offering me sweets and tiny bananas with a motion of eating with your hands followed with a “Makan, Makan!” a commonly used Malay phrase, meaning “Eat, Eat!”. And we frequently are laughing together about something. Often this is because of us realizing neither of us understands what the other person is saying, but also from just working together. We laughed when we were pruning, and I stepped down and gingerly lifted my boot, following a large crunching sound, to find a now splattered giant snail. And we laughed when I walked over and grabbed a bushel of clippings, to help out, followed by frantic motioning to put them down upon the realization that they were covered in thorns. No harm, no foul.  My favorite time though, was when they offered me some tiny bananas that I could not for the life of me peel the tops off of, and they turned to look at me just as I ripped the top off with my teeth. I sheepishly smiled in response before we all three burst into laughter.

Taking a break

These women also are in charge of some very important tasks for P&G, and we have done a lot of work  in the last couple of days. There is this constant activity of fertilizing, trimming, pruning, weeding and separating plants throughout the nursery due to the abundance and variety of plants. Every morning a lorry brings all the herbivore feces to the compost pile. This compost is then shoveled by the women into wheelbarrows and brought down to be mixed into the terra cotta colored dirt before it is used in potting plants in the afternoon. Thus far, most of this potting activity has been the result of propagating by dividing plants or by cuttings, but we also re-potted some plants that had been removed from an area of the zoo that is receiving a new layer of top soil. Like Eza told me when we took the initial tour of the grounds, nothing is wasted. So whenever new landscaping,  or some much needed aesthetic treatment takes place, the plants are dug up carefully and dropped off at the nursery to be divided, cleaned up and repotted.  As result, all the plants in Zoo Negara come through the nursery at some point.

Putting down new topsoil