Nature Blog

We had a Cooper school work party today. We started out with some initial invasive removal. We cleared a total area of 1,771 sq.ft. of Scotch broom (see before & after pictures below) and blackberry, and all of the debris was hauled to the school driveway. The other half of the day was devoted to…

Today the work party focused on erosion, fabricating, and live staking. Erosion is the removal of solids from a natural environment via weather. For example, when it rains on a slope, the water turns the dirt into mud. Then, as a result of gravity, everything on the slope gets pulled down the hill. This is…

Today we started on the last leg of the restoration of the Longfellow Creek Legacy Trail. We were joined on our first day by a fleet of 7th graders from University Prep. Our work was cut out for us: the piece of property we worked on was abundant in large untamed Himalayan blackberry and fields…

Today was a beautiful day. We began the day by removing invasive Himalayan blackberry and we removed a total of 6414 sq ft of blackberry. We also removed Evergreen blackberry farther up the hill. While we were working we listened to Amy Denio on the clarinet. Once we finished maintaining an area we were able…

We had a pretty good sized group for planting today. The red flags in the picture were placed to indicate where to plant the bare root conifers. To plant these trees, we use a tool called a dibble to make the hole. Holes dug for bare root Indian plum, which we also planted today, only…

Today we worked with private contractors hired by the City of Seattle to help finish the slope we started with EarthCorps. We committed our entire day to planting. All in all we got 81 plants and trees in the ground: 25 hazelnut, 8 Oregon ash, 15 salal, 6 Douglas fir, 4 vine maple, 6 lady…