Interesting and different

Today after waving goodbye to Dad who is off to China again, I chauffered Sarah around her manuka plots, which involved some walking.  As I understand it, the story goes like this: Sarah is doing her Masters in biology, and studying evolution/adaptation in plants.  She has four varieties of manuka plants, and four different coastal habitats.   She has planted seeds from each variety in each habitat, and is monitoring them as they grow, in order to discover how the different varieties adapt to the different habitats.  Exactly what she'll be looking for is a mystery to me, and probably way too technical as I know practically nothing about plants.  I never studied much biology at school, I preferred maths and physics. So today I went with Sarah to the four planting places.  The first one was easy, it was beside the road and only a little bit swampy.  The second one was a lot more swampy - I ventured in partway, then decided it was too hard to climb over the fence in the swamp, I would probably fall over and get myself all wet which wouldn't be fun as there were still two more places to visit, and more importantly if my camera fell in it probably wouldn't survive the experience.  Okay, so I'm rationalising, whatever, I handed the camera over to Sarah, and went and sat in the car.  Place number three was easier, it was close to the road again, and dry.  Place number four was my favourite.  It's on the hillside overlooking Pukerua Bay, and it involves a ten-minute walk along the railway line and then clambering around the hillside - and the view is fabulous. The project is still at a very early stage. Most of the seedlings have not yet poked their heads above ground, and the ones that have are very difficult to distinguish from the grasses that are popping up along with them.  My plan from now on is to do the monitoring trip with Sarah once a month and take photos. All in all, I probably got about half an hour's walking in, and not much of it uphill.  But the fresh air was good.
"Somewhere around here I have eight plots..."