Skywatch Friday- Walk amidst the trees

A text from a friend "Girl, we are planning a tree walk on saturday with a few of my friends and our kids, coming? It is from 4-5pm in the Tree park in Kotturpuram" I instantly replied "Yep, will be there"

Armed with a bottle of water, I headed out towards the park, only to find the lot of them already out and about. I spotted them near the water pump, and a small make shift shed of sorts. My friend asked me to pull out the buckets and pot from the shed, while she took charge of pumping water. 

The kids were all between 4-10 and some had a tiny bucket with them, which they insisted on using. It was quite amusing. The park is not huge, but has quite a few trees and young saplings, and a path between for people who like to walk. Amidst these trees, we also spotted an adult male spotted deer that soon disappeared into the wilderness. Wondered where he had wandered in from. 

The adults in the group carried the big buckets, pouring into the smaller ones and guiding the kids towards the plants. It was amusing listening to them advice each other, get playful only to be pulled back by their parent. The best was when my friend's son P wanted to water the wild weeds and I told him they were wild plants that needn't be watered. He turned around and said 'but those plants also need water no, why you saying no put water on it?" I realized explaining this was going to be tricky..

Here we are teaching kids to water and take care of plants, and then we tell them certain plants dont need water.. Quite an awkward situation.. I decided to leave these tricky things to the parents  and distracted him to the spider on the lamp post. Kids being kids, got distracted and all swarmed around trying to catch a glimpse of the spider. One kid announced "let us pour water on the spider and see what happens"... Jeez, what is up with kids of today!!scary... lol... 

As we walked around, there were a few regulars who asked us if we maintain the place, or who takes care of the weeding and so on. Some came from a few kms away to walk, and said the park seemed run down over the past few weeks and wanted us to do something about it .


Sure felt good to have done this activity, and we hope to continue it for as long as possible and rope in more hands.


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 About the park- Source: TOI 
The transformation of this area, which was once overrun by tonnes of waste and thick vegetation, was initially carried out in 2008 by the Public Works Department with support from Nizhal, a non-government organisation.Nizhal sourced and planted 240 saplings of over 100 different species of tropical dry evergreen forests/indigenous, naturalized trees/shrubs. Students and volunteers have been helping the greening process by pumping water from the lone hand pump to water the plants and adding manure.