St Christopher's Tawa - Bearing Christ on both sides of the local streams
Contributed by Mark Edgecombe
The last Sunday of the July school holidays proved a good day for members from St Christopher’s Tawa to head down to a local reserve and help a volunteer community group with some weeding and planting.
Willowbank Reserve, at the southern end of Tawa, has a history to tell. It was once planted as an orchard by 19th-century landowners, following the settlement of Tawa through the New Zealand Company's less-than-scrupulous immigration programme. Today, it's a good spot for a picnic, with a playground sandwiched between the confluence of the Takapū and Porirua Streams and the North Island Main Trunk railway.
Over the last few years, a semi-formal relationship has developed between our parish and a group of local residents, the Willowbank Reserve Care Group. Whenever our parish schedules a "Service Sunday" (or indeed Saturday), we're able to swell their numbers and get a fair bit of work done.
At our most recent combined event, we worked on both sides of the streams, blitzing tradescantia (nicely bagged for composting), and planting rengarenga, Carex dissita, oioi, lemonwood and various ferns. We were also able to get a bit of mulch onto the ground around some of the plants.
God put on a lovely morning for us, and we were able to work shoulder to shoulder, enjoying the nice, easy conversation that occurs when you're engaged together on a common task. We’re now looking forward to our next Service Sunday at the end of the September-October school holidays.
