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Ficus maintenance

 

 I spent the 3 hours of my shift almost entirely occupied by a single chore: scrubbing the black sooty mold off of the thick, leathery leaves of a ficus tree. The tree is in D2 (display room 2, tropical rainforest of New Caledonia) located in the northeast corner of the room. The sooty-mold problem had become more noticeable since the collapse of a tree which had been hiding the ficus from view.  The collapsed tree had become very top-heavy, on a spindly trunk unable to support the weight of its own canopy.

There were a few minutes to perform a few other smaller chores: cleaning up leaves from D4.

B showed me how to use the computer located in the workroom to enter my schedule into their online calendar. I entered the dates I would be coming to the greenhouse through April, 2023. I’ll have to remember to fill out their calendar when I return from my winter trip in April.

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