Fresh faces and the start of fall!
As summer comes to a close (sunshine, we hardly knew ye!) and fall starts to creep in, things are moving right along at Nature Consortium. This last week we welcomed 2 new faces to the Restoration Team: Lizzie, who will be taking over for Marisa at the end of the month as the Restoration Project Coordinator; and Amy, an AmeriCorps volunteer who will be helping out Lizzie and buphalo as the Restoration Project Assistant.
Lizzie & Amy are both stoked to be working with NatureC and to get out in the Greenbelt to tackle some blackberry. If you’re in West Seattle feel free to come by the office at Youngstown to say hi–or you can always come to one of our work parties!
That’s right, after a brief hiatus to recover from a busy busy summer, work parties in the Greenbelt are starting back up! We had our first one of the fall on Saturday up at Pigeon Point, and it was a great time. 7 crew members and volunteers removed 850 square feet of invasive Himalayan blackberry & thistle in 4 short hours. One of the things I love about the work we do is that even though restoring the Greenbelt is a long & on-going project, you can see drastic results in just a few hours with a small group. Check out these before-and-after pictures taken at Pigeon Point on Saturday:
What was once an impassible tangle of Himalayan blackberry is now completely open, walkable, and will give the native plants (such as that Red Flowering Currant in the left-hand corner) more room to flourish. We even uncovered some roses that had been planted a couple years back that had been totally overgrown by blackberry.
Beyond how good it feels to know that we’re making a difference, it was also just a great day to be out in the Greenbelt, period. The sun was shining, people came walking by with their dogs, and our friend Ben Yarges came out in the afternoon and serenaded us for an hour with the shakuhachi, a Japanese flute made out of bamboo.
Thanks Ben!
We’ll be having work parties every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday throughout the fall, so come on out & get dirty! You can sign up through our website (www.naturec.org/volunteer), emailing us (volunteer@naturec.org), or calling us (206.923.0853). Hope to see you there!
