holyoutlaw

EarthCorps coordinated five work parties in North Beach Park, starting in April and ending last Saturday, November 9th. They accomplished a tremendous amount of work, clearing more than 10,000 square feet of space and more than 240 plants, ranging from ground cover up to conifer and deciduous trees.

The day started earlier than usual, with some volunteers arriving a little before 9 a.m. to stage and place plants.

Yep, the weather was gorgeous and stayed that way throughout the work party.

Here are two of the 24 or so volunteers that were there.

I think they were UW students, but I’m not sure.

Here is a family group (well, the kids are from different families) from Meridian School.

I really like family groups at work parties. I think (hope) it gives the kids the idea that nature is not something that we just visit, but that we have to take care of as well. And the work is fun and invigorating. Well, that’s a lot to ask, so if the kids just have fun playing in the woods, that’s great.

Some empty buckets:

This was taken just before the lunch break, which means there were plenty more buckets added to the stack by the end of the work party. (Also, just noticed I forgot to “fall back” on the camera timestamp.)

It was a great experience having EarthCorps at North Beach Park. We’d love to have them back another time.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

It was pretty darn wet this morning, but at least it wasn’t cold. Five of us set out to do some survival rings on trees that desperately needed some help. As we walked down the trail, I tried what I remembered of the St. Crispin’s Day Speech. The bit about “those who lay warm in their beds” sounded entirely too tempting, so I stopped quickly.

Our goal was simple: put survival rings on some trail side trees on the south slope. The trees here desperately need it. There were four trees easily accessible, and we got them cleaned up in almost record time. Many of the trees that need work are in places inaccessible to volunteers — in some cases, just plain inaccessible. But these trees were very handy, with only a little brushing needed to get to work.

Here’s new volunteer Steve, posing beside a tree he cleared in record time.

Some of the ivy had been on the trees so long the roots had formed mats that came away in big sheets. Other roots had made furrows in the tree as they inhibited its growth.

Here’s Tad at the tree he cleared.

The stuff hanging down behind him is ivy that had reached the ground and rerooted. It would have broken off the branch it was dangling from in short order.

One of the last (“but not least”) things we did was get a tire in which a laurel tree had grown.

I’ve found this amusing since my early days exploring North Beach Park in 2008-9. I didn’t mourn its passing, though.

Usually work parties run for three hours, but since it was raining heavier by the minute, we were all bespattered, and had done the work we’d set out to do, we called it a day and headed out of the park. On our way out we found some more bottles’n'cans and took the opportunity to remove another tire.

All in all, a good, solid little work party.

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What with summer schedules and other things, only four of us were at the July work party for Friends of North Beach Park. But it’s frequently the case that summer work parties are poorly attended. I mean, look at that sky!

But those of us who were there got quite a bit done, and had a good time doing it. Plus, we were in the shade for the most part, so we kept cool as well.

Our main task was to mulch an area that had been cleared at the EarthCorps work party two weeks previous. I think I’m finally learning that (a) tasks will take longer and be harder than I think they will; and (b) it’s better to have a loose idea — sometimes called “solution neutral” — of what to do, because in the discussion and working out, the group mind will inevitably come up with a better idea.

We put mulch on the downslope side of the main trail, starting at about 150 feet from the entrance to the park.

At that end of the trail, the downslope side was not very steep. The main native plant here was sword fern, with a little low Oregon-grape. There have been a few restoration plantings, including a western red-cedar and a Douglas-fir. There had been very little ivy, but the plants there could use some comfort.

Pretty much dead center in this picture is the aformentioned western red-cedar. It’s still short enough to be under the fronds of the sword fern. But it’s looking good despite the drought.

As we moved further up the trail, the slope got steeper, and the sword fern thinned out. We were entering an area where the ivy and sword fern had mixed.

The last area we mulched was the beginning of the ivy monoculture on the very steep slope. We had a gravity assist for the mulching there. Dump the tarp or wheelbarrow full of mulch at the rim and watch it pour down. No need for raking!

This picture shows the extent of the mulching.

We finished the mulching for the day and had a little extra time, so we watered some plants that were looking a little peaked. Generally, plants should be left on their own. But we have a stream running through the park, so there’s no cost to the water. And it seems like even a little splash of water every week can greatly improve survival rates.

The next Friends of North Beach Park work party is Saturday, August 24th, 9 a.m. to noon. Sign up on Cedar. We’ll also be at Art in the Garden on August 10th. Hope to see you at one of these events!

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Welcome summer to North Beach Park Saturday, June 22. We’ll concentrate on building ivy platforms to prepare for the EarthCorps work party in July. If enough people show up, we’ll send an expeditionary force into the park to do a survival ring or two. But come see the park in its summer splendor. It’s like a jungle!

Here are the usual details:

Saturday, June 22, 9 a.m. to noon
Meet at the main entrance to the park, NW 90th St. and 24th Ave. N. Parking is available east of 24th on 90th. Wear weather-appropriate layers that can get dirty and mud boots. We’ll provide tools, gloves, and guidance. Bring snacks and water if you need them. North Beach Park has no facilities. All ages welcome, but children must be kept under supervision of their parent or guardian.

And to help your plans, here are the known dates we’ll be working in the ravine for the rest of the summer:

Saturday, July 13 — EarthCorps returns for the 2nd of four big work parties. They bring coffee, snacks, a port-a-potty, and lots of great enthusiasm. They’ll be doing the major ivy pulling this year. The 3rd work party will also concentrate on ivy removal, but the 4th work party will be a planting spectacular in the fall.

Saturday, July 27 — the regular Friends of North Beach Park 4th Saturday work party. We’ll be concentrating on survival rings for trees deep in the park. This could be adventurous! The hours are slightly different, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, August 24 — Friends of North Beach Park 4th Saturday work party.

We hope to see you one of these days! As an added enticement, it’s several degrees cooler in the ravine. ;>

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Saturday, April 27th, 9 a.m. to Noon
(details below)

April has been a busy month so far for North Beach Park!

April 7th was the Groundswell NW Annual Meeting. There were two inspirational presentations, by Dawn Hemminger (about the 14th Ave. NW park) and Milenko Matanovic from the Pomegranate Center (http://www.pomegranatecenter.org). Very nice!

On April 13th, we hosted the first of four EarthCorps-sponsored work parties. About 50 volunteers moved several cubic yards of mulch into the park, and then up onto a previously-cleared slope. There was also a great deal of ivy and invasive removal at the bottom of the slope in the Headwaters Bowl. By the time I had a chance to send an announcement email, the event was full! But we’ll have a few more in the upcoming months.

Last but not least, April 17th will see publication of an article about North Beach Park in the Ballard News Tribune. Keep an eye out for it, online and in print!

As we begin our third year of restoration, we’re really beginning to see results. We’ve planted nearly 700 plants, ranging from Douglas-fir to woodland flowers. Lots of trash has come out of the park. We’ve removed lots of ivy and blackberry, and as the ground is uncovered from the ivy, we’re finding out that there are lots of beautiful native plants underneath.

There’s still lots of work to be done, we’re just getting started.

So, join us Saturday, April 27th! Here are the details about the work party:

Meet at the main entrance to the park, 90th St. and 24th Ave. NW.
Wear weather-appropriate layers that can get dirty and MUD BOOTS.
Parking available on 90th st. east of 24th.
We’ll provide tools, gloves, and guidance. Bring water and snacks as you need them.
All ages welcome, children must be kept under supervision of guardian or responsible adult.
This work qualifies for community service credit.
Register online at http://cedar.greencitypartnerships.org/event/gsp/1787/

If you need more information, contact Luke McGuff at [email protected]

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“Phenology” is the study of annual events in nature, such as plants budding or birds nesting. It also makes for a great excuse to walk through North Beach Park once a week or so. I’m not getting there as often these days, since my studies about how to restore the park are taking me away from the actual restoration, paradoxical as that might seem.

Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanum)

I did see some skunk cabbage. I remember in previous years there would be areas positively lush with it. I think it’s a very easily disturbed plant, though, and it seems to disappear from areas where we’ve done any work. It grow in places too wet to work in until after it’s died back, but that still seems to be enough of a disturbance. It’s one of my favorite plants, and seeing it in North Beach Park and finding out about it is one of the things that drew me to the park.

Pacific Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum tenuipes)

There was also Pacific Waterleaf coming up all over the place. Pacific Waterleaf grows from early spring until July or August and then dies back. While it’s around, it can form a very dense carpet. And when it blooms, it can hum with busy bees. This plant, too, appears to be disturbed by restoration work. It grows among ivy, and once it dies back the ivy gets to keep going. Pulling up the ivy and mulching can really cut back on the waterleaf return.

But it wasn’t all mixed news.

Nootka Rose (Rosa nootkensis)

This Nootka rose was planted in March 2012, which is late in the planting season. Despite the long, cool spring, the plants we put in that late didn’t have much time to establish their roots before the long drought of August-September hit. But this plant seems to have survived, and is putting out buds nicely. Nootka rose was brought into the park by restoration.

Indian Plum or Osoberry (Oemlaria cerasiformis)

This Osoberry looks in good shape, too. This is another very early plant, that blooms before almost anything else.

I didn’t do as good a job of recording what was planted where in 2012 as I might have. So one of my goals for 2013 is to better document the planting season (October — January).

In the meantime, there are plenty of invasives to remove.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

The usual details:

• Saturday, January 26, 9 a.m. to noon
• Meet at the main entrance to the park, 90th st. and 24th Ave. NW.
• Wear mud boots and weather-appropriate layers that can get dirty. We’ll provide tools, gloves, and guidance.
• Parking available north of 90th and east of 24th. Metro Route #61 stops near the park northbound.
• Bring your own water and snacks.

Pictured here: Cascara, vine maple, silver spruce, tapered rush (for the wetlands) and others.

This month’s work party will be run by Drexie Malone and Tad Anderson, and they have a variety of plants ready for you to help place into the park. The plants come from Swansons Nursery‘s “Trees for Salmon” Program, the Parks Department, and private donations. Some are being introduced to the park, and others exist only because of previous restoration planting. Some are already found in the park growing wild.

Join us for what is likely to be the last planting work party of the season. Planting is part of the reward for the earlier work of removing invasives.

Can’t make a work party? Please consider donating to the Seattle Parks Foundation, which provides fiscal sponsorship to North Beach Park. Your donation to them is tax deductible and will go towards park projects. Click here to read about the park and donate.

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No work party in North Beach Park in December! But there are still plenty of opportunities to help restore our urban forests:

GOLDEN GARDENS is having a work and planting party on the 8th (this Saturday). It happens from 9 a.m. to 12 noon; meet at the dog park parking lot on Seaview Ave NW. Contact Doug Gresham at [email protected] for further information.

CARKEEK PARK is having a work party on the 15th. It happens from 9 a.m. to noon as well. Contact [email protected] for meeting place and further information.

In both cases, tools, gloves, and guidance will be provided. Wear weather-appropriate layers that can get dirty, and bring your own water and snacks.

Our first work party. Photo by Drexie Malone.

North Beach Park work parties will return on January 26th. Save the date! We’ll be planting some trees and plants provided by Swansons Nursery’s Trees for Salmons program. There are a lot of details still to be worked out, but the date and time are set!

2012 was a great year for North Beach Park. We had nine work parties, three visiting grade schools, UW ESRM 100 students, two major planting parties, two more forest stewards, and a separate project in the South Plateau working with young adults living in the Labateyah Youth Home. We also got fiscal sponsorship from the Seattle Parks Foundation, and received a microgrant from Groundswell NW.

You can support North Beach Park by making a tax-deductible donation to the Seattle Parks Foundation, and directing it to North Beach Park. Go to their donations page, and select “Friends of North Beach Park” from the Donation Designation drop-down box. Any money raised will be used to hire a natural area crew to work in the areas too steep for volunteers.

Photo by Kelsie Mhoon for MyBallard.com

For 2013, we have ten work parties scheduled: January-April, and June-November. All work parties are on the 4th Saturday, 9 a.m. to noon, and meet at the main entrance to the park, 90th St. and 24th Ave NW

As we learn more about North Beach Park, from stewarding it, working with its neighbors, and studying its ways, our appreciation deepens. We hope you can join us in 2013, and we are thankful for your support in 2012.

November 2012 work party. Photo by Keelin Curran.

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The work party at North Beach Park on the 24th was directed to planting. We had 148 plants to get into the ground, in three different locations, and in a number of microenvironments, from perennial wetland (wet all the time) to upland slopes.

25 Slough Sedge plugs ready to go into the wetlands.

Each year, Green Seattle Partnership gives every park under its auspices 200 plants. This year, we concentrated the order on wetland plants and upland shrubs. There are a lot of seeps in the park, and although the water moves slowly most of the year, it doesn’t stop. This year, which went from record drought to record rainfall, change is noticeable on a weekly basis. Over the years, the seeps have carried away quite a bit of the park.

We had 12 participants at the work party, which turned out to be just enough for the work we had. I had been worried that we wouldn’t get all the plants in the ground, but in fact, we were able to wrap up and have all the tools wiped down and back in the Jobox by noon. Getting the work done was vastly aided by a couple prep sessions with Drexie, tagging the plants at the Carkeek nursery, and then transporting them to the park and putting them in place to begin work.

We also had a few brand-new tools, courtesy of a microgrant from Groundswell NW. Here are some of them, artfully displayed on a pile of mulch:

A couple of the co-stewards mentioned that they felt like this was the first “real” planting. We know the park better than last year, we knew where diversity was needed, and we knew how to plant them. The plants are healthy and they’re going in at the perfect time of year for native plants. Their roots will establish over the winter, and when they leaf out in the spring, they’ll be much better prepared to survive the dry spell. (Many of the plants we planted last year survived the drought, but it’s still unclear whether they had enough energy to make good buds for next spring. We’ll find out.)

It was a great experience of everyone working together, the weather cooperating, plans changing in good ways, and nobody getting hurt (always a plus!)

Here are a few of us late in the work party, getting mulch into a bucket. You can see I’m not shy about getting dirty. Left to right, foreground: Clint, Luke, Alan, Morrie, Julie. Left to right, background: Selena, Drexie, Sam, Genie. Photo by Tad Anderson.

Here’s a group shot:

Left to right: Selena, Drexie, Luke, Julie, Morrie, Sam, Tad, Clint, Alan, Genie. Not pictured: Loren and David. All the pink flagging tape in the lower left corner is attached to just-planted plants. Photo by Keelan Currin.

This is the same group of folks, but the wider angle gives a good sense of the park:

Photo by Keelan Currin.

Thank you to everyone who participated and helped! It was great fun and very successful.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

On Sunday, Julie and I took a walk in two of our favorite parks: North Beach Park (you were surprised?) and Carkeek.

I wanted to go to North Beach to make some notes about the work done on Saturday, and to make some plans for the planting work parties (November 24! Save the date!)

While we were there, something started happening in a tree above us. We couldn’t see it, but we could sure hear it: A large murder of crows, cawing loudly and repeatedly. Julie thought they were mobbing a raptor sitting in the tree. As we watched, more crows joined every few seconds, and the cawing got louder and louder. Eventually there were so many crows that it became a chant, phasing in and out of unison. I felt like I was at the invention of song. We watched for several minutes, as the noise and chaos increased. It was still going when we finally turned away. Whatever was causing it, we’ll never know.

Carkeek — Puget Sound, rather — also had something in store for us. We went to look for salmon in Piper’s creek, missing them by about one day. On our way back up from the beach to the car, though, we noticed some people at the top of the bridge to the beach looking a lot more avid and engaged. We asked what they were looking for.

“Orcas are coming,” a woman told us. A man said that he had seen them off Alki, and that the J pod and K pod were swimming together. Hearing that news, we weren’t going anywhere. It didn’t matter how long it took.

It did take some time for us to see the orcas, but it was worth it. Even though they were so far across the Sound that even with binoculars they were very tiny. But we could see their dorsal fins rising and falling above the water level. We saw breaches and tail flaps. Even at that distance, it felt so much more impressive and real than seeing a close-up on television.

But what I particularly liked was the loose community that developed. One woman had her phone out, and was passing on tweets from the Orca Network. Another woman, once we started seeing the whales, would comment on the behavior: “There’s a tail flap. There’s a breach.” If she hadn’t, we wouldn’t have known what was happening. There was some sharing of binoculars, and people constantly describing where they saw the orcas. We stood there at least an hour watching.

It was sharing the experience among ourselves that made this a uniquely urban experience. The way we came together, some people intentionally, some (like us) by accident, would never have happened anywhere else. On a whale watch cruise, we’d have been closer, but the community around the experience wouldn’t have felt as organic (mind you, if I have the opportunity, I’ll go on a whale watch cruise, now more than before). This was a pretty simple experience, after all, but with all the news about conflict and individualism and every man for himself, it was great to have.

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