Trail Restoration, Mulching and More
We hosted another 3 days of events in the West Duwamish Greenbelt since the last entry on the 14th of this month. Temperatures reached the nineties and it has been sunny and a little humid. Scarlet Tanagers and a rabbit were spotted on the Sound Way Property last week and recently an owl pellet and coyote scat were deposited there.
Thursday brought our Truman group from 9-2 and then 3 students from Middle College High came from 4-6. We focused on sheet mulching another 1000 square feet (with 12 cubic yards) at our 14th an Holly site in an area parallel to the fence between the Greenbelt and South Seattle Community College. This particular piece of trail used to be extremely muddy and slippery until we moved it from a trough to a crest around 8 feet north of the initially encountered path. We did maintenance digging in this area the week before. Kenny took charge of spreading cardboard in between the Alders, Indian Plum, Service Berry, and Oregon Grape we planted this winter. Most of the Oregon Grape looks completely dried out and dead, but upon closer inspection, most of them have small green buds emerging.
Check out Thursday’s Before and After shots o
f the mulch pile. You can see how large it was when Mike, Susan, Heidi and Tony from Truman started compared to what remained when Mila and Mimi from Middle College High worked the pile. As Teisha, Dillan and Noah are shown, we used a wagon and several wheel barrows to haul the mulch 800 feet from the pile to the restoration site.
Friday brought lots of sunshine and a second visit to the Greenbelt from the Washington Reading Corps who also volunteered in January. The group of 25 worked up at 2 sites in Pigeon Point Park from 10am-2pm. Seth and James, working in one of our Earth Day sites, led a group who cut approximately 700 sq. ft. of Blackberry, and then dug another 200 sq. ft. of the invasive, while Kenny and I led a group in digging approximately 800 sq. ft. of Blackberry along the fence next to the entrance of the Park. Ben came out to play Japanese flute, which everyone enjoyed, and the group celebrated their work at the end of the day with a short hike through the Park and a potluck lunch.
This Saturday is the first Saturday of 2008 that we have not hosted a work party. We did however host a Washington Native Plant Society training at the 14th and Holly Site. The class was there to learn about volunteer recruitment and work party hosting. We did around 600 square feet of maintenance digging (some of it was a previously un-dug area) in the center of the current 14th and Holly site.
