We have found many wheels during our Greenbelt restoration work. I am glad I took photos of some of them.
Category: Photography
Another Type of Illusion
The Illusion of Spinning
The Before in “Before and After”
My neighbor Christine gave me these photographs a day or two ago. She took them in March after Seattle Parks Department staff cut down most of the blackberry vines on the Greenbelt lots we are restoring. I look forward to using it as a “Before” photo in November after we’ve cleared the land and planted new trees, shrubs and ground covers. And I also look forward to comparing them with the photos we will take every spring, summer, fall and winter from now on.
This one will also become a good “Before” shot.
Wordless Wednesday
Greenbelt Restoration Work Party: June 14
For three hours on June 14, eight volunteers worked diligently in our Greenbelt restoration site. A week before, Seattle Parks Department staff had cut down a large area of blackberry vines, leaving a lot of debris and uncovering an astonishing amount of trash.
We spent the first hour of the work party picking up trash. There is more garbage for us to pick up, but we got a good start on it.
When we began this project, there were two fields of invasive bamboo on this site. Seattle Parks Department cut the bamboo down last March. We placed the cut bamboo on drying racks so that they didn’t re-root. That bamboo is now dry.
On Wednesday, we stripped the branches from the dried bamboo canes. The canes were given away to gardeners and the branches are being used as part of our newest drying racks. (I will write a post about the drying racks soon.)
We also removed blackberry vines from plants and trees…
…. and rescued ferns and a fringe cup plant.
It was another productive and rewarding day in the Greenbelt!
Mother Nature’s Creation
I’ve been so involved in the Greenbelt restoration work that I’ve given my front yard garden very little attention. I’m loving how Mother Nature filled in the gap and made it beautiful in her own way.
For the last few years I have planted five or six pansies in the garden. Occasionally one has come back after the winter. This year, though, pansies of all colors have sprung up throughout the garden. There are so many of them! It seems so strange since that has never happened before.
Many of the blooms are withering but the combination of colors are still beautiful.
I had an early bloom on one of the squash plants……..
…. but so far there isn’t any squash. The plants seem healthy but I haven’t seen both male and female blooms on any variety and I haven’t seen any bees. I will hand fertilize when that becomes possible.
The Lazy Susan plant and the Echinacea plants have buds. I look forward to seeing their flowers.
Lazy Susan
Echinacea
Echinacea
There is a seemingly endless supply of lemon balm and peppermint.
Lemon Balm
Pepperment
Thank you Mother Nature for all that you do for me, and for the world. You are a paragon of compassion and an artist that has no equal.
Interesting Facts about Ferns
One part of our Greenbelt restoration site has so many ferns. I decided to read some articles about ferns and was fascinated by what I learned.
- Ferns have been on earth for 360 million years.
- The type of ferns we see now have been here for 45-50 million years.
- Dinosaurs ate ferns, conifers, cycads and mosses.
- Ferns were on earth 200 million years before flowers.
- Ferns are helpful in preventing or eliminating pollution because they remove heavy metals from the air and the soil.
- Today’s ferns are not edible because of toxicity. [Note: Maybe that is because of the heavy metal mentioned above.]
- Some ferns have a life span of 100 years.
- The height of ferns ranges from 2 inches to 30 feet.
- Compressed ferns turned into fossil fuel and became the basis for oil, gas and oil.
- Ferns reproduce from spores. They don’t have seeds or flowers.
- There are at least 12,000 types of ferns on earth today. There may be up to 20,000 different species.
- In North America there are 441 varieties of native ferns.
- Ferns are vascular, circulating water and nutrients through their veins.
- In the past, there were people who believed if they ate ferns they would become invisible. Still others believed ferns protected them against goblins and witches.
When I took this photo today, I imagined dinosaurs walking through this forest. Doing that reminded me of the Jurassic Park movies!
You can learn more about ferns from the articles below:
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Daily Prompt: Taper
Mystery, Adventure and Reward
Yesterday I took on the challenge of removing bindweed (morning glory) and blackberry vines from a thimbleberry shrub.
The bindweed wraps itself around each stem, weighing it down and eventually killing it.
The thimbleberry leaves are beautiful. They have three to seven lobes and are soft and hairy.
I tried to unwind the bindweed from each thimbleberry stem carefully, but the leaves and stems are so fragile that I lost many of them in the process of trying to free them. The stems are now free from blackberry and bindweed vines but I’m going to have to get under the shrub and dig out the blackberry roots to keep it that way. We will probably have to deal with the bindweed every year.
It was fun to watch the stems straighten once they were relieved of the weight of the bindweed. The shrub still looks scraggly but it will fill in and return to the beauty it is meant to be.
The density of the bindweed made it hard to tell where the shrub began and ended. The area towards the back had a much thicker layer of bindweed.
As I started to cut it away, I realized that it wasn’t thumbleberry that was under it, it was a gigantic fern. With renewed energy, I started cutting away the bindweed. Before long, the fern was free!
I love doing this work. It is full of mystery and adventure and is so rewarding.
Found in the Greenbelt: Dinosaur
On May 13th, we had a work party that included 20 University of Washington students needing volunteer hours for an Introduction to Environmental Science class. A few days later, I discovered that one of them had left me a surprise. The student had placed this toy dinosaur near, but not in, a pile of Greenbelt trash. I’m not going to throw it away either.
At the time I found it, I washed it and waited for the pile of trash to be picked up. Today, I put it back where the student had left it. I hope it enjoys its new home. I’m imagining it experiencing a sense of freedom and triumph after having survived 30-40 years buried in the dirt.
Living, Learning and Letting Go 