Wonderful Write-up from the volunteer Anup
My Day couldn't start on a more positive note,i was all set to do sapling maintenance for a bunch of saplings planted at the Egmore Women's and Children hospital by Team CTC a few months back. I thought it’s a great way to serve and give back to society. But wait there was more to it and heres why.
If you give it a thought ,watering the saplings which would one day grow to be majestic trees and give us plenty of free oxygen and shade cannot be called a service,it is much more than that ,it should be called insurance ,life insurance to be precise for both you and your loved ones. The Best Part is unlike the conventional insurance you don't need to pay in cash ,that too for years together.Just watering and maintenance for 1 or 2 years is more than enough.
So how many of you are ready to sign up for this insurance??
Coming to the event details,a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers gathered at the premises early morning and began with the task.We had to do mulching and watering for around 37 saplings planted by CTC volunteers a few months back.some of the volunteers had taken the trouble to get sugarcane bagasse which was later used as a mulching material.
Mulching by the way is a process of using plant waste,dried leaves,sugarcane bagasse etc around a saplings base, so that moisture is retained and the water doesn't evaporate easily in this heat,we would like to thank Mr Mani aka BloodMani for telling us about the process in details.
We were done with all the mulching activity by 8:00 am and took a small break to relax ,during the break Mani took feedback for the event and asked for suggestions to make it even better in coming times.
all done??
Well No, watering was the next thing on our minds,which we finished around 9:00 am.
The entire experience as usual was very good,there is always a feel good factor associated with such tasks and the high that it gives.
Nowadays With our city temperature rising,just like we humans ,plants also find it hard to quench their thrust,especially because they have not yet grown into full blown trees,so why not help them?
I would like to use this platform to request everyone to be a part of such events in the future and see for yourself the immense satisfaction it gives
In the end i would say "There are some things money can buy ,for everything else theirs Chennai Trekking Club"
Wonderful Write-up from Sandhya
Around 18 of us gathered in Egmore hospital on Friday morning 3rd of April for the Sapling maintenance activity to assess the condition of the 37 saplings planted in the hospital in Jan this year. By the time I had reached, the Sun god had just shown his gracious presence, and most of them had started with mulching, watering of saplings with their caps on. The garden hoe was put to use and the soil bed near the root was covered with some cane husk waste. This process is called Mulching and it is done for the plant root to remain moist and survive the heat from scorching sun - Thanks to the volunteer who has preserved the cane husk for this maintenance and had brought sufficient quantity for all the plants in the Egmore hospital.
From the earlier events, it was noticed that the coconut husk gets shrunk once it dries up and hence sugar cane husk was the primary mulching material for this event. The hospital had its own bag of non-biodegradable waste and it was essential to keep off the plants from this, hence some of Ainthinai volunteers set out to pick them up. Then, we had an introduction session where we came across interesting people and interesting names :P – Heaven guy, Delhi Babu topped this list of course ;). This was followed by a short meet with Mr. Dilli Babu, the gardener in Egmore hospital and Mr. Rajkumar of Ekam Foundation, who played a key role in providing an opportunity for CTC Ainthinai to plant saplings in this hospital earlier this year.
Then Mani started explaining about the blood cancer patients in that hospital and how often the requirement of blood would arise for these. It was disturbing to hear that an active child in the same hospital had passed away last week due to lack of AB+ blood. It was unfortunate that this child couldn't get the required blood when the need arose, though 50 units of same blood group was collected 10 days before this requirement. We realized how a life could have been saved had the news of blood requirement reached the person who would have been eligible and interested for donating blood at the right time– every share in social media does matter in these situations and could make a huge difference.
Since it was a working day for most of us, some of them left while Anup, Barani sir and Manoj completed the watering of plants, sapling count in Egmore hospital. Meanwhile, four of us including Preethi, Prabhu sir and Mani made our way to Nurse hostel – the path was fully decked with huge tall trees, it definitely didn’t appear to be like a part of Egmore. A special mention to the organizer, who was so eager to make his way to this hostel with an excuse of sapling maintenance, not sure whom he had come across here during the plantation event :P. As we reached the spot, there was no need to search for a mulching material, we were greeted with huge amounts of dried soft flowers from the trees there, and 4 of us completed the work in quick time with this soft mulching material.
There were many more sapling planted by the hospital gardener and we spent some time there watering plants and clearing off the plastic waste. Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Dilli Babu, the gardener who had done the frequent watering of all the plants, we had 100% survival of the saplings planted in the previous event. It is well said that “Save the trees and the trees will save you” – It was our time to make our hands a little dirty for them and one day, they would be re-paying them back with lot of fresh air and respite from hot sun, few more summers down the line.
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