Another Adventure

Al and I bought a house on Beacon Hill in Seattle in November of 1973. Soon thereafter, we bought the lot behind our house. The properties on both sides of our new lot were completely overrun with blackberry vines; but our lot, thanks to the people who had lived there since sometime in the 1930’s, was well maintained. It was terraced and had several fruit trees. We added vegetable gardens and did our best to keep the property free of blackberry vines and weeds.

After we divorced in the 80’s, I sold the lot; there was no way for me to keep it up and I needed the income. At that point, the blackberry and ivy vines began to invade the property. The person I sold it to, sold it to someone else and that person sold it to the city when they were buying property to create the Seattle Greenbelt.

In 2014 and 2015, I attempted to remove some of the blackberry and ivy vines, particularly around big cedar tree and a big alder tree. Sometimes I enlisted a friend to help, but we barely made a dent in the invasive vines.

In March of 2015, I saw some yellow down by the alder tree and was intrigued; I wanted to see what it was. I picked up my shears and made my way through the dried blackberry vines. It was not easy to get to the yellow, which turned out to be daffodils, but I eventually made it.

The daffodils were beautiful and when I looked inside one of them, I was surprised to see a spider.

If you would like to read more about that 2015 adventure go to: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize)

In fall of 2016, GreenFriends members joined with Green Seattle Partnership in restoring this section of the Greenbelt. Our site not only included the lot I had once owned but three other lots as well.

A few days ago, I was looking out my kitchen window and saw yellow in the distance. I knew immediately what it was. I took a photo from the kitchen. Look at the photo below and see if you can see any hint of yellow.

Then I took a closeup photo, still from the kitchen window. Can you see the yellow in the distance now? Don’t worry if you can’t; you will be able to see it soon!

The next day, I decided to get as close as I could to the flowers. This time my journey would not be hampered by blackberry vines but it might be halted by my physical mobility issues (poor balance and dizziness). I decided the safest way for me to get to them was to walk down the Hanford Stairs, because those stairs have a handrail. I would also bring my cane.

Once I arrived at the entrance to the lower path, I left the stairs and entered the Greenbelt. There was so much new growth on the site. This unfolding fern was one of the first things that caught my eye.

Next, I noticed that several of the wild ginger plants we had planted in 2017 were now dwarfed by fringecup volunteers (volunteers in this case are plants that sprout on their own, i.e. we hadn’t planted them). In the photo below the wild ginger is peeking out from under the fringecup. Both are native plants.

As I came close to the main part of the site, I saw a flowering tree in the distance. What in the world was that?

Before I turned the corner into the clearing, I passed a planting area and saw that horsetails were coming up en force! I knew from experience, that before long we won’t be able to see anything other than horsetails in the lower areas of the site!

When I entered the clearing, the flowering tree mystery was solved; the blooms were on the top part of the big tree that had fallen during the first week in March.

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

From this area, I was able to get a view of the fallen tree from a different perspective than I had before. There was still no way to capture all of the tree in one photograph.

Soon, I continued my journey to the daffodils. They were on a slope, so I didn’t feel safe to get close to them but I did take some closeup photos from the path.

Then I looked at the nearby planting areas.

I decided to return to my house using the stairs behind my house since I am much more stable going up stairs than down them. On the way back, I saw how much the pearly everlasting shoots have grown. And there are so many of them. If you would like to read my previous update about those plants go to: Pearly Everlasting Shrubs pp. 24-27.

The next day, I decided to see if I could get a little closer to the daffodils. I noticed that if I walked towards them from the south side, the ground was almost flat. I knew I still couldn’t take ground level photos like I did in 2015 but I was very happy to get a closer shot…

… and to have completed another adventure!

Greenbelt Restoration Work Parties: February 26 and March 4, 2020

When we held the February 26 and March 4 work parties none of us knew that they would be the last work parties of the quarter. The remaining ones would be canceled due to the pandemic.

February 26

When I went outside to make last minute preparations for the work party, I got a big surprise. A big tree had fallen not far from our toolbox. I hadn’t been to that part of the site for several days, so I didn’t know when it fell but guessed it was during or soon after the big wind and rain storm that had occurred the previous weekend.

The tree had fallen from the top path, over the old house foundation that is on the property, and partially over the planting area that is below the foundation. I hadn’t realized how big the tree was until it fell; it must have been at least 80 feet tall. The photos in this post are primarily from the tree’s bottom and top so in no way do they show its magnitude.

(To enlarge the photos click on any of the galleries.)

*The side-lying rootball is about 8 feet long and 12 feet high!*

The tree fell between two drying racks. It touched both of the racks but didn’t damage either of them. Even though it had fallen over numerous planting areas, none of our native plants were significantly harmed; in fact only one branch on a bald hip rose shrub and one on a pacific ninebark shrub was damaged. Once again, against incredible odds, Mother Nature had protected the plants.

The tree had fallen from the top path, over the old house foundation that is on the property, and partially over the planting area that is below the foundation. We hadn’t realized how big the tree was until it fell; it must have been at least 80 feet tall. The photos in this post are primarily from the tree’s bottom and top so in no way do they show its full magnitude.

Soon after I discovered the fallen tree, I called my supervisor at the Seattle Parks Department to inform him that the tree had fallen. He told me it would probably be left on the ground to provide habitat for birds and insects.

So, after all of us spent some time looking at the exposed tree roots, we began the planned activities for the day. Most of the students started removing weeds, wood chips and leaves from around all of the trees, shrubs and ground covers we had planted on the site since 2017. Having bare ground around each plant helps water reach the plant roots when it rains. The UW Capstone interns were team leaders for the UW service-learning students during this work party.

An intern found some snail or slug eggs as she was working.

A student that loves to dig out invasive blue bell bulbs did that instead of clearing the areas around the plants. The photo of her shovel shows how wet the soil was that day.

While all of this activity was occurring, Antje, one of our regular team leaders, cut back bamboo shoots.

Later, one of the student teams removed some of the smaller fallen tree branches that were near the native plants.

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While those students removed branches, the other team finished clearing the areas around the plants on the site and then picked up litter. Sorry, no photos of that work!

March 4

During what turned out to be our last work party, the interns took the service-learning students back to the area along Cheasty Boulevard that they had started to clear several weeks before. Weeds were already growing through the wood chip mulch they had spread at that time. On March 4th, they dug out those weeds and cleared more of the area, and then spread more wood chips over all of the cleared area. I don’t have photos of the work but I do have photos of the results!

The fallen tree covered all but one of our Greenbelt paths. While the students worked, Antje identified and marked new ways to get around the lower part of the site without walking through the planted areas.

I feel so grateful to all of the students who chose to work on our site for their service-learning or internship this quarter. I also feel grateful for those who have worked here in the past or will work here in the future. Every volunteer leaves having made a significant contribution in creating “Another Future Healthy Forest”.

Greenbelt Restoration Work Parties: February 7- 21, 2020

This quarter, we have two UW Capstone interns and three UW service-learning students working on the site. All five of the students work for 2 1/2 hours on Wednesday afternoons and the interns come back most Fridays.

There were five work parties between the 7th and 21st of February. I attended all of the work parties; Antje, who has been helping on the site for more than a year was at two of them; and Shirley, who is one of our long term team leaders, participated in one.

February 7

The interns are responsible for clearing one section of the site. They had worked on “their” section on January 17th and 29th. On February 7th, they put wood chip mulch on areas that they had cleared the previous week… because there had been so much rain that the ground had become muddy. They also removed more invasive vines and weeds and put a wood chip ring around a mock orange shrub we had planted in March of 2019.

February 12

Only one intern and one service-learning student attended the February 12th work party. They spent most of the session scouring the site looking at the flagging tape that had been put on when we planted trees, shrubs and ground covers between November 2017 and March 2019.

The color and design of the tape allows us to know when the plant was planted. As the plant grows, the flagging tape may get too tight and need to be loosened; or cut off and replaced. The shrub in the photo below was one where the tape was so tight that they had to cut it off and put on looser tape. This shrub was planted in November 2017.

While they were doing that, Antje and I were weeding.

Towards the end of the work party, the intern noticed that someone had dumped trash down the Hanford stairs and on one of our planting areas . We spent the last part of the work party picking up the trash.

February 14

As is usually the case, the Capstone interns came to work on their section of the site on Friday. This week was different in that a service-learning student came to do a makeup session.

The interns started clearing the area on the western side of their section. They also pruned some shrubs that had been planted sometime before we started working here in 2016.

Later in the work party, they planted two snowberry shrubs. It may be difficult to see the shrubs in the photos below because they were still in winter twig form.

While the interns were working in their section, the service learning student, Antje and I “cleaned up” the drying racks where we place the invasive vines and weeds we have removed. We did this clean-up by removing big branches from the pile, cutting long branches into smaller pieces and making sure none of the invasive vines were touching the ground. Making these changes allows the debris to compost faster and not re-root.

At one point, the service-learning student noticed a hole in the ground not far from the drying rack where she was working. When she looked into the hole, she found item after item of trash that had been thrown into the Greenbelt and over decades had been covered by soil. The most remarkable litter she found was a BIG teddy bear.

After she had removed the trash, and filled the hole, she returned to working on the racks. Towards the end of the work party Antje and she replaced flagging tape on plants that had been tagged incorrectly. (We had run out of this year’s flagging tape and had to use something else to mark some of the plants when we did the November 2019 planting.)

February 19

One of the interns had wanted to experience leading teams during the quarter. She had been assigned a team several times but since there weren’t many students this quarter her “team” at times consisted of only one other person.

On February 19, all of the student-learners and interns were present so she had the opportunity to be team leader for all of the students. They cleared an area along Cheasty Blvd. After the land was cleared, they covered it with wood chip mulch to help retard weed growth and reduce erosion.

Shirley, one of our regular team leaders, and I watched over the process giving guidance as necessary. Shirley also put wood chips on some of the areas we had cleared in a previous work party

I didn’t take photos during February 19th work party, but I took some the next day. The first two photos below show uncleared areas that border the section the students worked on that day. If I had taken “before” photos, they would have looked very much like these. Ivy, buttercup, grasses and blackberry vines were the most common invasive plants.

And this is what that section looked like at the end of the work party.

We spent the last part of the session doing a task that was less strenuous, clearing leaves and wood chips from around previously planted trees, shrubs and ground covers in two of the planting areas on the north west part of the site.

February 21

There was another interns work party on February 21. On that day, they continued clearing the western part of their section, snapped off suckers coming from a large tree, put wood chip rings around the snowberry shrubs they had planted the previous week … as well as around a rhododendron shrub we had planted in March of 2019… and spread wood chips on cleared areas that were muddy.

The shrubs in this section will be able to thrive now that they are free of the invasive vines.

I am always amazed by what a small group of enthusiastic volunteers can accomplish during a 2 1/2 hour work party. By the end of each session, there is always a tangible difference in the site.

Freedom to Thrive

I love to watch how plants return to their glory when they are freed from invasive blackberry vines. Our site is has so many sword ferns; very few of them were planted by us. Most were barely visible when we first removed the blackberry vines.

This fern was freed on March 11 of last year. The photos below show what has happened since that time.

Greenbelt Restoration Work Parties: January 22 – February 5, 2020

There were three Wednesday work parties during this time period. UW Carlson Center Service-Learning students and UW Capstone interns participated in each event. Antje and I were team leaders at all three of the work parties. Haley, one of our long term team leaders joined us during the January 29th work party.

January 22

Three Service-Learning students and one Capstone intern participated in the January 22nd work party. The students did a variety of jobs. Two of them disassembled one of the drying racks and moved the dried blackberry, ivy and periwinkle vines as well as other dried weeds to another part of the site where they will continue to decompose.

This past fall, the 5 cu ft pile of wood chips that was in the part of our site that borders 25th Ave S was taken. Earlier in the year, we had a problem with yard waste being dumped in the same area. Since most of the yard waste was sorted by size, bundled and banded, we suspected it was being dumped by a company rather than individuals These were irritating annoyances and we pondered ways to prevent them from happening again.

In the past, we have moved wood chips from that place into smaller piles in the main site to make them more accessible to volunteers. Would moving them there make it less likely that the wood chips would be taken? Since our main site is very sloped, it certainly would make it a lot harder for outsiders to remove them.

The Seattle Park Department delivered 8 cu ft of wood chips the week before our January 20 MLK National Day of Service work party. During that event, the volunteers had formed a bucket brigade and moved most of the wood chip pile from the 25th Ave S area into the main site.

One of our team leaders had suggested we use the remaining wood chips in the 25^th Ave S area to build a barrier along the front border of that area. The barrier wouldn’t be high enough to prevent people from taking wood chips or discarding yard waste but maybe it would be a deterrent.

At the beginning of the January 22 work party, two students and one staff member started building the barrier. Once the other students finished taking down the drying rack, they also worked on the barrier. Together, they did a great job of creating the new structure.

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

So many of the things we do in this work are experimental. That is definitely true of this barrier.

At this point, there are more questions than answers. Will it deter people from taking the wood chips when another pile is delivered? Will it discourage companies and individuals from dumping their yard waste in the Greenbelt? Will we have to take part of the barrier down in order to get a new wood chip pile or will the delivery truck be able to dump them over the barrier? Only time will tell.

Once we finished building the barrier, we weeded in three different areas of the site. I was weeding too so have no photos of that part of the work party but here are some of the results!

January 29

Three Service-Learning students and one Capstone intern participated in this work party.

It had rained a lot since January 22. One of the areas we had started to weed at that work party looked like this a day or two later.

It was clear we needed to cover the area with wood chips when we weeded there to make it less muddy and to prevent erosion.

As I mentioned earlier, Haley was one of our team leaders on January 29. She led a team of two students in this area. Her husband also joined that group partway through the work party. The group continued the weeding that had been started the previous week, and then covered the cleared land with wood chips.

Here is an “after” photo! There are no more puddles of water anywhere in that area.

The other students and staff weeded additional areas we had begun weeding on January 22. These students also added a layer of wood chips to part of a path that had become muddy.

These are two “after” photos from one of the areas the second team weeded that day.

February 5

Two staff, two Capstone interns and three Service-Learning students participated in this work party.

Every work party during January the weather forecast had been for rain. We had lucked out in that the weather was always better than the forecast. There may have been light rain showers, but there was never heavy rain. Our luck ran out on the first Wednesday in February. That day, the rain poured throughout the 2 1/2 hour work party.

We spent most of our time working on our newest planting area which is in the southeast corner of the site. I don’t remember when we started to clear that area but when we worked on it towards the beginning of August 2019, it had looked like this:

By November 2019, a large part of the area had been cleared and was ready for planting.

It seemed like a good place for the whole group to work on February 5. Because of all the rain, the ground was muddy and, in some places, slippery. The first thing we did was to build a wood chip path from the beginning of the area to the new hemlock tree at the far end. We also put a new layer of wood chips on the path leading to that planting area.

We then weeded that section of the site and in nearby areas.

After weeding in the rain for most of the work party, we switched to putting wood chips on pre-existing paths that were getting muddy.

This is one of the paths we “renewed” that day:

One of the students created two novel ways of filling the buckets with wood chips during the January 22 – February 5 time frame. 1) Stand behind the pile and push the chips into a bucket with her hands and 2) Sit in the remainder of the pile and push chips into the buckets with her feet. She got dirty but her methods were effective and she enjoyed doing it!

These three work parties were fun and very productive. It looks like there is the possibility of sun for the Wednesday February 12 work party! I sure hope that forecast is right.

(The February 7, 9, 12 and 14 work parties will be reported in a future post.)

Greenbelt Restoration Work Parties: January 15 to January 20, 2020

During Winter Quarter, January-March 2020, we have two groups of University of Washington students working with us in the Greenbelt. The first group, three Carlson Center Service-Learning students who are taking an Introduction to Community, Environment and Planning course, come on Wednesdays from 1:30-4:00. The second group consists of Capstone interns who are seniors majoring in Environmental Studies. They join the Service-Learning students at the Wednesday work parties and also work in the site on most Friday afternoons.

The first work party of Winter Quarter was held on January 15. In the days leading up to it, it became clear that weather was a potential problem. The Seattle Parks Department notified us that we were to cancel work parties if the temperature was below 32 degrees, if there was more than two inches of snow on the ground, or if more than half an inch of ground was frozen. We already had a policy of cancelling work parties if there are high winds. The chances of any or all of those criteria occurring was likely.

By the morning of the event, there was 1/2 – 1 inch of snow on the ground and the possibility of winds. We had expected 20-degree temperatures, but it had warmed up considerably. We decided to take it minute by minute. We would do a longer than normal orientation in my house and, if weather permitted, would take a tour of the site and do some restoration work afterwards.

Sarva and I led the orientation and the tour of the site. There wasn’t much time left afterwards and it was so cold that we decided not to start the restoration work that day. Still, we were off to a good start!

UW Capstone interns and Service-Learning students

We gave the Capstone students responsibility for restoring a small section of the site and creating a planting plan for that area. The Capstone instructor also requires them to create a “deliverable” for the organization that is hosting them. Our students plan to create pamphlets about forest restoration that will be useful for future volunteers.

On Friday, January 17, the Capstone interns worked on their section of the site for the first time. They took down a drying rack where invasive plants like blackberry and ivy vines had been drying out for a year and moved the contents to a part of the site where dried debris is breaking down further. We will eventually plant in that composted debris.

After finishing moving the dried debris from the rack, the interns started digging out blackberry root balls and ivy from their section. I taught them what they needed to know to do those two jobs and then picked up trash from the site and the adjacent stairs, checking in with the students from time to time.

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In future sessions, as the interns finish removing invasive plants from their section of the site, they will spread wood chips over the newly cleared area to prevent soil erosion.

On January 20, we held our second annual Martin Luther King National Day of Service work party. Our team leaders were Maya, who is Forterra’s Green Cities Stewardship Coordinator, Shirley and me from GreenFriends, and Dave who is one of our regular team leaders.

Most of the volunteers were alumni from Western Washington University’s Huxley School of the Environment and their families. They were celebrating Huxley’s 50th anniversary. Others included our two UW Capstone interns, a family from the neighborhood where our site is located, a man who had signed up for event information on our GreenFriends information list during Amma’s last Seattle area visit, and several people who found us on Green Seattle Partnership’s event page.

After an orientation, we divided into four teams and started to work! Shirley and the neighborhood family picked up branches that had fallen on pathways during the last few months, weeded planting areas in the north part of the site and loosened up or replaced flagging tape on shrubs that had grown so much that it had become tight. (We use flagging tape of various colors to show what year a tree, shrub or ground cover was planted.)

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

Maya’s group pruned a strip of shrubs and removed invasive blackberry and ivy vines along 25th Ave S. The shrubs had been planted years before we started our restoration project. They had grown big enough that in places they had become a thicket.

Dave’s team worked in one of the few areas on the site where we hadn’t done much clearing in the past. It contained many forms of invasive shrubs and vines, primarily blackberry vines. Before the work party, I saw one blackberry vine that was at least 20 feet long.

At the beginning of the work session, several members of the group moved the contents of an old drying rack so that they would have a place to put their cuttings.

My team removed the dried vines and weeds from one of the drying racks; looked for tagging tape that had gotten too tight and loosened or replaced it; and weeded several southern planting areas.

Drying rack after dried invasive vines removed. It’s ready to hold more!

After a snack break, all of the groups joined together to move wood chips from a pile on 25th Ave. S into smaller piles on our site. (Moving the wood chips onsite makes them much more accessible to members of future work parties.) We accomplished that task by forming a bucket brigade.

Maya took two time-lapse videos of the bucket brigade. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I did. https://photos.app.goo.gl/W77onh6wwyBfWVN86 (Hover the cursor over the video to make it work. To make either of the videos fill the full page, click on the arrow.)

The three work parties between January 15 and January 20 were very different from each other, but each was productive and gave the participants a significant forest restoration experience.

Every volunteer who comes here contributes substantially to creating another healthy forest in Seattle.

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.

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.

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

Greenbelt Restoration Project: Service Learning Session 7

November 19th was the last of this quarter’s service-learning sessions. We were lucky to have Dave, one of our regular team leaders, join us for the first time. Antje, another team leader, who has helped throughout the quarter, also attended.

Before I tell you about this work party, let me give you some backstory. In January 2019, we started taking apart the racks we used to dry the blackberry and ivy vines and weeds that we dig out. (Putting the invasive vines and weeds on racks prevents them from re-rooting.) We spread the dried debris that was on the racks inside the old house foundation that is on the site. Our goal was to eventually make that area a planting area. While some of the lower layers of debris has decomposed, most of it hasn’t.

That February, we planted one plant in the foundation as an experiment, to see what happened. That plant, an oceanspray shrub, is now 5 feet high!

We decided we would begin another foundation planting experiment during the November 19 service-learning session. We would plant 5 tall managrass and 4 Roemer’s fescue plants along the southern and western inside borders of the foundation’s walls.

There may be some of the debris that has composted enough to have become dirt, but if there is, it is far below the surface. Two of the students did the best they could do to create holes the debris and then added some dirt to the holes. Next, they planted the plants, continuing to add dirt in the space around the plants.

Once the students had planted the 9 plants, they reinforced a stretch of path by adding a 2-4 inch layer of wood chips to the existing path.

While those students were planting the grasses and reinforcing the path, other three students and two of the staff members started clearing blackberry and ivy vines, buttercup, grass and other weeds from an area near the entrance to the site. This is what that area looked like in April 2019, the first time we worked there.

Even though the area had been cleared before, the weeds had come back; and the shrubs had formed a thicket that hung across the sidewalk. By the time the first team finished their work, the clearing of this area was well underway.

The two teams joined together and cleared the rest of the weeds. While the students were digging out weeds, Dave cut down the dead laurel trunks that surrounded a pine tree. Then he and I pruned the shrubs. Once the invasive plants were gone, we all covered the area with wood chips.

This was one of those weeks that I got so involved in the work that I, for the most part, forgot to take photos. The photo below will have to represent all of the students and staff who were working in that area.

The transformation in the space was remarkable.

Click on the photo gallery to enlarge the pictures.

The shrubs need more pruning but they look so much better; and they are no longer hanging over the sidewalk.

This was the last session for these service-learning students. They each have made a significant contribution to this site and they all seemed to enjoy their time here. I feel so grateful for their presence and their help.

Greenbelt Restoration Work Party: DocuSign Planting Day November 13, 2019

On November 15, 2017, a corporate group from DocuSign came to work at our restoration site for the first time. The event was held on their Global IMPACT Day. At that time, I looked up the philosophy behind Impact Day and found this statement:

We believe character is defined through action. With DocuSign IMPACT, we are committed to putting this character into action by harnessing the power of DocuSign’s people, products, and profits to make a difference in the global communities in which our employees and customers live and work.

Employees from DocuSign also worked in our site in April 2018, November 2018, April 2019; and on November 13, 2019, they returned to do our fall planting. DocuSign has become a valuable part of our restoration team.

Prior to the event, the spots where the trees, shrubs and ground covers would be planted were cleared and marked with green or pink flags. The pots containing the plants were put next to the flags a day or two before the work party

When the big day arrived, 21 DocuSign employees and 2 students from Seattle Central Community College participated. Our staff consisted of Claire, Shirley and me from GreenFriends; Susan, a Forest Steward from another Cheasty Greenspace site; John, who is a neighbor; and Antje, who is one of our team leaders.

Following an initial orientation, everyone divided into four teams and got to work. After each plant was planted, the volunteers put a ring of wood chips around it. The wood chip rings help in retaining moisture and reducing weed growth.

Click on any of the photo galleries to enlarge the photos.

Once the teams finished planting their areas, they did other restoration work. Two of the four groups added wood chips to rings around previously-planted trees and shrubs. The third group cleared invasive vines from the land on the sides of the Hanford Stairs. The fourth group finished clearing an area along Cheasty Boulevard and then planted some shrubs and ground covers in that area. This was the first time we had planted in that part of the site.

One hundred and sixty-seven trees, shrubs, and ground covers were planted that day. The gallery below shows some of the species we planted.

[The plants from the November 2019 planting will all be tagged with light blue flagging tape. You can see it in most of the photos. Flagging stakes, such as the one in the first photo, still need to be added to some of the smaller plants. The flagging tape allows us to know when a particular plant was planted. This blue tape will be used for the November 2019-March 2020 planting season.]

And here are some photos of the newly planted Cheasty Boulevard area.

The DocuSign employees, students, neighbor and team leaders did amazing work and I think everyone had a good time. Rumor has it that DocuSign may come back again in April. I sure hope that is the case!

I offer my heartfelt thanks to everyone who participated in our November 2019 planting day and to those who helped prepare for it. Each person made a significant and important contribution to the goal of returning this stretch of Seattle’s Greenbelt to a healthy forest.

Greenbelt Restoration Project: Service-Learning Session 4

The service-learning students and our forest restoration team leaders, who are also volunteers, accomplished so much during the 4th service-learning session.

[For those of you who may not have read previous posts about the service-learners, they are students from the University of Washington who are working on our site as an adjunct to their course work. They come once a week for seven weeks.]

Session 4

We worked in an area that was full of horsetails, bindweed, dried branches and other weeds. The horsetails had started to die down for the year, but there were years of dried stalks underneath the live ones. We left the live horsetails alone as much as possible because they are a native plant. However, it often wasn’t possible to remove the bindweed without removing the horsetail, because both break easily. The horsetails have been around since before the dinosaurs, though, so we know they will be back in the Spring!

This is what the area looked like when we started the session.

We hadn’t planned to create a path that day, but it soon became clear that one would be helpful. Here are before and after photos of the new path.

We worked on the path and on removing the invasive weeds throughout the three-hour work party. Most of the weeds were taken to drying racks.

[We’ve started bagging bindweed and putting it in the trash in case being on the drying racks isn’t enough to prevent the invasive vine from re-rooting.]

Click on the gallery to enlarge the photos.

The transformation in the land was remarkable. Compare the photos below to the first one in this post.

Thanks to the effort of all of the volunteers, it had been another productive work party. Step by step, and with the blessing of Mother Nature, we are creating another healthy forest in Seattle.