MLK Weekend of Service!
This year we decided to honor the MLK holiday with an entire weekend of service projects in order to make having “a day on, not a day off” more accessible to everyone. We had three amazing days filled with perfect weather (nearly 60 degrees on MLK Day!), great attitudes, and hard working volunteers. Over the weekend, 208 volunteers put in 777.25 hours of service!
Saturday was our largest planting day of the weekend with 453 wetland plants put in the ground, most of them sedges and rushes, but with some piggyback and fringe cup in the mix as well. On Sunday we worked at the Highland Park Way entrance to the Soundway property and we freed 25 trees from ivy and planted 108 more plants.
Monday, MLK Day proper, was a huge success with groups coming out from the Univesrity of Washington, YMCA Earth Service Corps, local high schools, and we had the help of several AmeriCorps VISTA members. We cleared a massive area up at Pigeon Point Park and we planted 300 rushes!
Over the weekend we completed 43,500 sq.ft. of maintenance and 19,000 sq.ft. of initial removal (blackberry and Scot’s broom)! Ben Smith and his trusty clarinet joined us Saturday and Sunday, and super volunteer Tess Morgan sang us some lovely tunes on Saturday and Monday. Amy Denio (clarinet) and Jim Knodle (trumpet) also roamed around Pigeon Point on Monday and serenaded our volunteers while they worked.
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Healthy forests benefit everyone! Thank you all for honoring Dr. King’s spirit and President Obama’s call for service this year!
