holyoutlaw

For the August work party, we did a number of miscellaneous tasks that all needed doing. It was nice to get them attended to. We had seven people, including three new folks we hope received a warm welcome.

The first item on the agenda was stacking burlap that had been delivered by the Parks Department. We got that taken care of promptly.

Back row: Len, Judy, Kathy; front: Dan and Tad. Not pictured: Doug, who’d already left to go pull blackberry in the wetland.

That picture is looking across six knee-high stacks of burlap. There’s some attempt at forced perspective, I must admit. That should keep us for a good long time.

The second item of the day was watering. Generally, you try to avoid watering in restoration projects. Part of the idea of native plants, after all, is that they’ll live on the water the local climate provides them. But this year is short on rainfall, and we put some plants in places that are very dry. So we’ve been trying to water them with enough water to keep them alive until the rains start up again.

The same crew again, planning the watering.

We got a LOT of watering done. Six of us were working on it, carrying buckets of water up from the stream. About 65 plants along both sides of the trail got a good shot of water.

Last but not least, some good old fashioned ivy removal. There were a couple short snags covered in ivy that were just the right amount of work to round out the day.

The snag on the left of this picture had been so covered it looked like a little ivy bush. Now that it’s cleared off, it will provide food for some birds. And as usual with ivy pulling, the area that got cleaned up was a bit larger than the first estimate.

All in all, a pleasant little work party, relaxing and invigorating both.

EarthCorps will hold a work party in North Beach Park on Saturday, September 14th. The next Friends of North Beach Park work party will be two weeks later, Saturday, September 28. We hope you can join us at one (or both ;>) of these events. It’s great exercise and a great way to meet people.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

Last Saturday (April 13), EarthCorps joined Friends of North Beach Park for what was the first of four work parties that will happen in 2013. It was a great start to our third year of restoration.

EarthCorps brings in a crew, supplies, tools, and experience. Lots of groups looking to do community service go to their website, so their events usually have good turnout. We had about 50 volunteers, making this twice as big as the next-largest work party that North Beach Park has ever hosted.

Here’s the crew (left to right): Jessa (Philippines), Masha (Russia), Alex, Ethan, and me (USA).

(Note: The time stamps on the photos are wrong — didn’t notice until looking at these I’d forgotten to change to PDT. Onward!)

The official start of the work party is 10 a.m., but for the EarthCorps crew it’s a lot earlier. Their day starts about 7, loading the trucks and vans at EarthCorps headquarters. (For an event in rural King County, they’d probably start even earlier.) They were on site at North Beach Park and had done a good bit of unloading by the time I showed up at 8:45.

The plan for the morning was that one group would transport mulch down into the park, staging it for a bucket brigade in the afternoon. The other crew would do some planting on the slope we would be mulching. Then crews would switch, and transport crew would do some invasive removal and the planting crew would do transport.

Here are the EarthCorps folks inspecting a possible worksite that turned out to be relatively invasive free. Also, as you can see, it would have been crowded working in there. We found another spot.

People started arriving a little before 10, so we were able to get going pretty promptly.

Masha explaining the plans for the day.

The attentive group. It was cold in the morning, but soon enough everyone warmed up.

Jessa gives a planting demonstration. The planting crew planted quite a lot: sword fern and red flowering currant on the hill, sitka spruce and oregon ash in the wetlands.

Ethan leads a group cleaning up the mulch staging site.

And here comes the mulch! Some of it came by bucket, some by wheelbarrow. It was about 450 feet down the trail. Getting it down there was easy, the walk back up the trail was the hard part.

Once all the planting was done, the planting and mulch transport crews switched tasks.

Here’s a sign of success: All those people all over the park, and only a small bucket of trash came out. And one tire. As an example, everything to the right of the blue tarps is a trash pile from two work parties a year ago. That’s what we used to find every time we worked in the park.

Invasive removal crew, at the base of the slope in the Headwaters Bowl. Note: The man in the t-shirt is probably working harder than the people in hoodies and jackets. But we’re not here to judge.

In the afternoon, EVERYONE participated in the bucket brigade. This is exactly what I wanted a large work party for: the slope needed to be mulched, and the best way to do it was with a bucket brigade.

This picture is taken from very near the start of the bucket brigade. The people in the background are at the end, about 200 feet further down the trail.

The slope has been covered in two layers of burlap, and now receives a finishing touch of 6-12″ of wood chip mulch. This will help suppress ivy resurgence and prevent soil erosion.

High fives at the end of the day!

Here’s what the mulched area looks like. Nice! There are about ten trees and several shrubs in there.

I want to thank EarthCorps and everyone who attended the work party for all the great work done. It was truly a pleasure.

Friends of North Beach Park will have our regular 4th Saturday work party on April 27. The next EarthCorps event will be in June or July, but don’t worry, we’ll give you plenty of fore-warning.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.