Amma Quote

 

 

If you wish to serve, if you have compassion for people,

if you have any love for the world, step forward bravely.

Amma

 

Amma will be in Oakland from November 22-26 and in Detroit from November 29 to December 2. For more information go to: https://amma.org/meeting-amma/ammas-north-america-tour.

Greenbelt Restoration Work Party: November 10, 2018

The November 10th work party was one of our biggest. Six team leaders, four of which were Green Friends members, four neighbors, and 29 students from the UW Introduction to Environmental Science class participated.

During the first part of the work party, we split the group in half and ran two bucket brigades at the same time. One spanned the distance from the wood chip piles located at the bottom of the Hanford Stairs and the Greenbelt. We had used wood chips from those piles at the previous work party, so the piles looked small. I had expected that we would finish moving those chips and need to move to piles at a different location but that wasn’t the case. Even now more wood chips are available there. The second bucket brigade started at the top of the Hanford Stairs. In that location there were two piles of wood chips that had been delivered the previous week.

These bucket brigades had two purposes. 1) We would create new piles of wood chips throughout the restoration site. The chips in those piles will be used during our November 15 planting work party, during which time two buckets of wood chips will be placed around each tree, shrub and ground cover that is put into the ground. In this instance, the wood chips serve as mulch, reducing weed growth and holding in moisture. 2) We would finish covering most of the paths that snake through the site.with three inches of wood chips. Our hope is that having a thick layer of wood chips on top of the paths will prevent them from getting muddy and slippery during the winter rains.

(Click on any of the galleries to enlarge the photos.)

During the second part of the work party, we formed four teams. These teams focused on getting areas ready for the upcoming planting event. One team moved dried branches and blackberry canes out of a new planting area. That group also spread dirt in an area where a compost pile had been taken apart during previous work parties.

Before
raking up dried debris
spread compost dirt

The second team cleared the ground around two sides of a red twig dogwood patch.

The third team pulled out blackberry root balls and raked out a section of land north of the Hanford Stairs.

One of our neighbor volunteers cut down blackberry canes and dug out blackberry root balls and weeds from an area just across the stairs from the third team.

We make a plant order in May of each year. The Seattle Parks Department provides us with the plants towards the end of October or the beginning of November. This year we had ordered 250 plants of 23 varieties.

Prior to this work party, the shrubs and ground covers had been separated into ten groups, each number assigned to the planting area where the plants will be placed in the ground. The trees were grouped separately.

Cedar, Spruce and Douglas Fir trees
Area 10
Alder trees
Area 9
Area 3,4, 6, and 7
Area 5 and 8

The fourth team carried those trees, shrubs and ground covers to the areas where they will be planted.

After the work party was over, three of the team leaders walked around the site placing every plant in the spot where it will be planted.

Thanks to the effort of these students, neighbors and team leaders, we are now ready to plant. I am so excited to see what the land will look like once the trees, shrubs and ground covers are settled into their new homes!

Graduation: A Song to Live By

I was just re-watching several of Nimo’s music videos. I found one that I don’t think I’ve seen before. It is different than the others but so full of wisdom. It was his offering to a 2017 graduating class. I’m so glad I was present on the day he sang for Amma in 2015. His music touches me so deeply.

Two of the others I watched tonight:

Greenbelt Restoration Site: We Are Almost Ready!

We’ve been preparing for our first 2018-19 season planting day for months. We’ve done that by 1) putting a three inch layer of wood chips on the paths that run throughout the site, 2)clearing new planting areas, and 3) weeding the existing planting areas.

In mid October, I started making “plant signs” by writing the name of each plant we had ordered from the Seattle Parks Department on a Popsicle stick. The “signs” would be put into each of the pots once we received the plants. After each tree, shrub or ground cover has been planted, the volunteer who does the planting will push the sign into the ground next to the plant.

Each year, flagging tape is used to tag the plants so we know what year each of them was planted. Blue and white checkered tape was used throughout the 2017-18 planting season. During the 2018-19 season, the tape will be red with black polka dots. This year’s flagging tape was chosen by a group of children!

The normal practice is to tag each plant after it is planted. This year, we are going to put the tape on the plants before the planting day. That will ensure that each plant is tagged and will allow the us to tag the plants in a more leisurely manner.

Small plants are often not able to be tagged in the same way as the larger ones, since they may have fragile or tiny stems. In the past, we have picked up a dried branch from the ground and put the flagging tape on one end and then pushed the branch into the ground near the newly planted plant. This year, I decided to prepare the flagging sticks ahead of time too. It occurred to me this was also a way to put the small but sturdy branches that are in our debris piles to good use.

I gathered several branches from the site and brought them into my house where I could prepare the sticks in comfort. From these few branches, I was able to make 65 flagging sticks! I needed to make more, but this was a good start. (Click on any of the galleries to enlarge the photos.)

A fellow student in my Tai Chi class gave our restoration site three cedar trees he had raised. Those were the first trees I tagged.

Our plants arrived on October 30. When they were delivered, they had no labels and were not sorted.

It was a lot easier for me to sort the plants this year than last, since I was more familiar with the plants. I sent photos of the varieties that I wasn’t sure about to Jayanand, a plant ecologist friend who lives in Pt. Angeles. Soon, all of the plants were sorted and ready to be tagged.

After our October 21st work party, Sarva, Anavadya and I picked out locations for the 33 trees we will be planting. Sarva and I also met on November 4th to decide where most of the shrubs and ground covers will go.

The other thing that happened on November 4th was that Kavita performed a puja asking Mother Nature for her blessing, to protect and help the new plants to grow.

We already have 37 volunteers registered for our November 10th work party. On that day, we will finish preparing the site for planting. After that work party, Sarva and I will put the plants on the spots where they are to be planted; and on the 12th or 13th, Anavadya and I will distribute the 95 plants that don’t have a designated space yet.

Then, on November 15th, most or all of the trees, shrubs and ground covers will be planted by DocuSign employees, a corporate group. This is such an exciting time of the year.

Green Seattle Day: November 3

Each year, the Green Seattle Partnership sponsors a Green Seattle Day. On that day, work parties are held in parklands all over Seattle. Sarva and I decided to volunteer as team leaders at Cheasty Mt. View Park. Several other GreenFriends members and their friends joined us.

The number of people who registered for the work party amazed me. There were seven in our GreenFriends contingent, but 126 volunteers in the whole group.

One of the leaders encouraged the participants to plant from a place of gratitude. She suggested that the volunteers name their trees … and that they talk to the trees as they put them into the earth. As I wandered through our section, helping people with the planting, I heard many participants doing that.

After some of our GreenFriends group planted this tree, they decided to give it a kiss.

The 126 volunteers planted 800 trees, shrubs and ground covers during the first hour of the work party.

We spent the rest of the work party removing invasive blackberry and ivy vines. Again, it was phenomenal to witness how much can be accomplished in a short period of time.

We put vines we cut onto drying racks so that they don’t touch the ground and re-root. There were several drying racks in the area where we were working but they were soon full. Before long there were big piles of cuttings around the site.

Some of the volunteers built a new drying rack and then we moved the piles of cuttings to the new rack.

drying rack for invasive cuttings
loading the drying rack

Before long, the three-hour work party was over and we prepared to leave.

What a wonderful morning it had been. The work party was such a good example of the adage “Many hands make light work.”

More Mushrooms

When Sarva (Shirley) and I were working in the Greenbelt on Sunday, Sarva saw some BIG mushrooms. It seemed to me that they were in the same place as mushrooms I had photographed on October 29 and had included in my November 4th post. Could they have grown so big so fast?

(Click on the gallery to enlarge the photos.)

I realized there was one photograph I hadn’t shared in that post.  It was of two mushrooms that were near the patch of mushrooms that I had included.

When I looked at the two photos together and compared them to the new photos, I realized I was seeing the same mushrooms. They had indeed grown this big in one week. Now, they were near the end of their life cycle.

Yesterday, I saw another patch of mushrooms that I had shared in my previous post. They had both grown and multiplied.

Inspirational Videos

Sreejit sent me the link to a video yesterday. I loved it:

This morning I played it again. As I was doing that, I noticed another video by the same group. When I listened to/watched it, I got goosebumps. By the end, I was teary.

What a good way to start my day. I hope these music videos also brighten your morning/afternoon/evening.

One Gift Turned into Three

A friend just sent me a link to this video. I loved it.

I decided to listen to another one of his other songs. I loved that one too.

Then this video caught my eye. It wasn’t by Keb’Mo’ but I also loved it!

Thanks Vani… for being the person who led me to this string of gifts.