I never planted a garden this year, because I put my time and energy into working in the Greenbelt, but I had a garden just the same. Even though they aren’t supposed to be perennial flowers, the pansies continue to come up in the spring and every year there more of them. And I have other beautiful perennials.
I didn’t take photos of the pansies this year, but I did take some of the others. I hope to take some microscopic photos of the echinacea flowers soon.
There have been more bees in my garden than there have been for years; bumblebees, mason bees, honey bees. They have particularly loved the echinacea, lavender, and marjoram plants.
I don’t seem to have a copy of the bee balm flower I took earlier in the summer but I took one this week of a frequent visitor to that plant. I wish the photos were clearer but the hummingbird moves faster than I do.
I planted a few lettuce plants in the front yard in early spring but nothing else. Nature apparently decided that wasn’t enough. Five cherry tomato plants came up in the front yard and potato plants came up in my back yard raised beds. Both were seeded by last year’s plants.
I have really appreciated the work that Ramana and I did in the back yard in the spring and early summer. It is so beautiful.
So there is beauty around me, both in my yard and in the Greenbelt, even though I didn’t plant a garden this year. As I wrote this post, I remembered Pete Seeger’s song Turn, Turn, Turn. I will end the post with a 1966 video of Pete Seeger and Judy Collins singing that song.
From Spring Quarter of 2017 through Autumn Quarter of 2018, students from the University of Washington’s Introduction to Environmental Science class helped with the forest restoration work on our site. In fact, they were our major source of volunteers!
I was very disappointed when the teacher retired at the end of 2018; disappointed for me, not for him. I had been told that he would probably teach the class again Summer Quarter of 2019. And he is! Students from the class attended our June 29 event, our first work party of the summer.
Shirley, Claire, Dave and I served as team leaders. Sixteen students from the Introduction to Environmental Science class, friends of two of the students, and John, a neighbor who has attended almost all of our work parties participated. Two other neighbors helped for a while; one signed in participants as they arrived and another took many of the photographs.
Shirley
Claire and Karuna
Dave
After an orientation, the participants were divided into four groups.
There were several places on the site where our native trees, shrubs and ground covers were being overtaken by blackberry and bindweed vines as well as other weeds. This was particularly a problem on the borders of the property. Shirley’s group cleared away the invasive plants on one of the planting areas that borders the east side of the site.
Click on any of the photo galleries to enlarge the photos!
Before
After
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Dave’s group worked on the upper south planting areas. There the blackberries had completely covered a debris pile that had been created when we first cleared blackberry and ivy vines from that portion of the land. Only a tiny bit of the dried debris was visible.
The group cut the blackberry vines away from the debris pile and in nearby areas and then took many loads of the dried debris to another part of the site. They carried the live cuttings to drying racks located elsewhere on the property.
Before- I can’t find the photo I took that showed just a glimpse of the covered dried debris pile but this one will give you an idea of how the area looked at the beginning of the work!
After- None of this ground was visible when the group started their work. Next step- dig out the blackberry root balls.
John also worked in that area. With his trusty pickaxe, he cleared many blackberry vines and weeds from the southwest corner of the site.
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Generally, I focus on coordinating the event rather than leading a team. At this work party though, I lead a small team of three students. They worked on two projects. They did such a good job, even though I was only with them from time to time.
When there is a dead tree on the site, it is generally not cut down. As the tree decays, and even after it falls, it nourishes birds, animals and insects either by providing shelter or food. There was a dead shrub on this property that had grown as big as a small tree. Its branches were dropping into some of our new trees and shrubs. The first job this group did was to cut back those low hanging branches so they didn’t interfere with the growth of the new native plants.
Before
After
When the students finished that project, they started clearing the blackberry vines that were growing into the planting areas along the lower part of the southern border of the site.
Before
Before
After- the fern was completely covered when the group began the work
After- there is now 3-5 feet of space between the plants and border
Claire’s group cleared bindweed and other invasive plants from an area that was also covered with native bracken ferns. Those ferns had surprised me when they emerged from the ground last year since I didn’t know they were there. They covered a lot of the native plants we had planted.
It was tricky to remove the invasive bindweed without hurting the bracken ferns or other native plants but the students did a good job of doing it. Towards the end of the work party they also removed the suckers that were coming out of two maple trees.
Before
After- sword and bracken ferns as well as snowberry and red flowering currant shrubs are visible
The work party had begun at 10:00 a.m. At 11:30 we stopped for a snack break and to take a group photo.
After the break, all of the groups continued their work. At 12:40 participants began the final tasks. They put the remainder of the invasive plants they had removed on drying racks, gathered the tools and took them to the tool box, put all the supplies away and joined together for a closing. During the closing, we celebrated all that they had accomplished during the three hour work party.
We’ve planted more than a dozen oceanspray shrubs in our forest restoration site. Some of them may have had a few blossoms last year, but many more have them this year.
This week I saw oceanspray shrubs in other Seattle parks that were 13 feet high and nearly as wide. It will be interesting to see how big the ones in our restored forest grow.
One of my favorite Greenbelt flowers is the bleeding heart flower; they are so small and delicate. On June 9, I took what I think is an amazing photo of one of those plants.
To me it looks like a bleeding heart flower birthing a seed pod. I look forward to learning how and when to harvest and spread the seeds. Even more, I look forward to seeing a lot more bleeding heart flowers in our Greenbelt restoration site next spring!
This spring has been very exciting for me. We planted our first trees, shrubs and ground covers in November of 2017. This year most of those plants had a tremendous growth spurt. Several species bloomed for the first time. One of those was this bald hip rose shrub.
April 2019
The beginning of the path between the Mt. Baker light rail station and the Hanford Stairs is lined with bald hip rose shrubs.
One day in late May, this is what I saw as I was walking home from the Mt. Baker station.
I realized I was getting a glimpse of what our Greenbelt site is going to look like in a few years. WOW!
In April of 2017, I took a live stake workshop. The participants cut branches from a variety of shrubs, took them home and planted them in containers. The stakes rooted throughout the summer and early fall. In November of 2017, I planted the ones that had in our forest restoration site.
Three of the Pacific Ninebark stakes not only survived, they thrived. When I was walking through the restoration site today, I noticed that there were many buds on the shrub. One of the flowers had partially bloomed. I think it is SO beautiful.
There are many flowers like this one on the shrub. The photo below shows about a third of the plant’s flowers-to-be.
This shrub will be so beautiful when all of these buds open. At this point, it is still a fairly small plant. I can only imagine what it will look like years from now when it is fully grown.
When I walked out of my house onto the back deck yesterday, this sight caught my eye:
I couldn’t believe it. When were these built? The nest on the right was biggest and they descended in size for seven rafters.
I’ve had bird nests in the rafters before, but only one at a time. And why did the bird not finish any of them? I looked on the other side of the beam and saw this:
The wasp nest was very small, but it is more than likely the answer to my question. I wouldn’t want to raise babies there!
