Mother Nature Provides… Again

On January 22, 2019, I found a shovel on our Greenbelt restoration site. It was standing up against the remnants of a house foundation that is on the site. I was very surprised because I had been standing in that spot the day before, and it wasn’t there then. I put it away. The following day, I found a shrub sitting on the ledge next to the place where I had found the shovel.

There was blue and white checkered flagging tape on the plant, which indicated that it had been planted somewhere in Autumn of 2018. I couldn’t find any hole on the site so I had no idea where the shrub had come from.

Since I couldn’t think of any reasonable explanation for these events, I concluded, tentatively, that I was “supposed” to plant the shrub in the foundation. In January 2019, I wrote about that mystery- A Mystery in the Greenbelt. Towards the end of March, I wrote a followup article- Mystery Followup. Both articles contain numerous photos.

Before I go on, let me give some more backstory. The house foundation was discovered in April 2017 when Seattle Parks Department staff cut down the blackberry vines on the site. Because of items we found within the foundation and the presence of charred material in the area, we believed the house had burned down in the 1950’s.

We decided to use the foundation to store the racks we build to facilitate drying out blackberry, ivy and bindweed vines and other invasive weeds we dig out on the site. Putting these invasive plants on racks prevents them from re-rooting.

Early in January, 2019, we started disassembling the racks and spread the dried debris throughout the foundation. We also spread the dried debris from other racks on the site in the foundation. We planned, in time, to use that space as another planting area.

At that time, I had planned to plant in the foundation after the dried debris had composted and turned into dirt. When the mystery plant showed up, however, I let go of that plan; I would plant the shrub in the foundation.

Planting in dried debris is not the same as planting in dirt. There was some material towards the bottom of the debris that was pretty well composted but almost everything above it consisted of dried canes and branches. I decided to dig a hole in the debris and then place some dirt in the bottom of the hole, put the plant on top of it and then spread as much dirt as I could around it.

As I was deciding what to use for dirt, my eye fell on a single mole hill that was near the foundation. I noticed that dirt was very light and airy. I thought it would be perfect! By the beginning of August, the shrub, which turned out to be oceanspray, had grown significantly. My planting strategy had obviously worked.

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Fast forward to mid-November 2019. We had some extra Roemer’s fescue and tall managrass plants after our November 2019 planting day. I thought it would be interesting to use the plants to experiment with planting in the foundation area again. Shirley (Sarva) and I decided we would have the UW service-learning students plant the fescue and managrass along the inner southern and western borders of the foundation.

The day before the students came, I saw the scene in the photo below in front of the foundation. At the time, I had been wondering what dirt we would use for the planting.

We rarely see mole hills on the property and to see four big ones (there were four even though the photo only shows three) directly in front of the foundation seemed like no accident. I realized that, once again, Mother Nature had provided the dirt we needed for the experiment. And again, the soil was so light and airy; perfect for planting the new plants.

On November 19th, the students planted 9 fescue and managrass plants.

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It will be interesting to see how they grow in this location. I imagine I will be writing updates in the future!