Last Week & Today

Last week (Nov. 20), Jim and I worked in the area of the spring planting under a steady rain. Unlike the week before, the rain didn't stop. There were LOTS of morning glory roots, more than in the area on the other side of the trail around the ocean sprays.

Jim had cardboard so we used it around some of the plants, brought in mulch, and called it a day. The area has had a lot of fireweed. In fact, it's been a field of fireweed in summer. We'll see if digging out morning glory roots affects that. This past summer, the fireweed sprang up among our spring plantings, obscuring them from the trail. The twinberry below is doing quite nicely.

This morning, it was surprisingly dry. That is, not raining. Except I wasn't feeling well so I just wanted to walk over to the North Woods to see the tree that fell. Along the way, taking a brief detour, I took a photo of the trail that goes westward to the Southern Forest from the south pond. I suppose this is one way to deter walkers; the trail is flooded for a good 30 or so feet.

In the North Woods, what happened was that on Thanksgiving night, a tree took down the power lines along 155th and the lines in turn took down some poles to the west. Photos of fallen wires were in Shoreline Area News:

http://www.shorelineareanews.com/2016/11/wind-and-power-outage-and-clean-up-in.html

Here's the stump of the culprit, from inside the park. On 155th, you can't use the sidewalk from here to 1st NE; downed wired are still visible. Note the orange barricade in the photo.

Curiously, you can use the sidewalk going west, toward Meridian. We then encountered this interesting scene below, with part of a pole held in place by some wires. Further along the sidewalk you can also see a pole that's been sistered.

Back in the park, we trampled through the North Woods. I was complaining to Jim that the ivy we've taken out has been replaced by creeping buttercup. Here, there was a mix of ivy and buttercup. Also in the mix was Italian arum here and there.

In the creek, an oil boom had been placed to trap any oil. Jim said that the transformer that was knocked down contained oil that spilled. This then explains the presence of Department of Ecology in the SAN article.

Really no work on the walk today. I pulled one baby holly; Jim picked up a beer can. When we were back on Meridian and I was about to leave, Gary showed up. I left the guys at the park to do their thing.

Selective Weeding

On Nov. 13, Jim drove his truck to the park, thinking no one would show up. Robby and Gordon appeared right at 9. There was steady rain--the reason for Jim's pessimism. Gary would show up later, after we had settled working in the Southern Forest. We worked around the plants we planted a year ago. Overall, they are doing quite well! The sword fern below has probably tripled in size. Note the Herb Robert nearby--I took that out. There were a lot of little blackberries in the area as well.

Also, because there's not much of it in this part of the park, I asked the guys to take out creeping buttercup while taking out Herb Robert. Even though the professionals have said it can be left alone, my perspective is that since there's a lot of buttercup in the park, there's no need to have it spread everywhere. The ground was soft with rain so where it was easy to do, out came the buttercup!

We bagged any morning glory we found. But at the end of the session, I made a little compost pile of other plant material. On the bottom is a layer of old ivy cords taken from a nearby pile that's been sitting there for at least 18 months. I then piled on the Herb Robert, ivy, buttercup, blackberry and garden variety weeds that I had pulled up. I will monitor this small pile to see how long it takes to decompose.

The Ocean Spray Area

The week before the fall planting party (11/6/16) was also very productive. It was just Jim, Gary and me.

I had wanted to finish the area I had worked on digging up morning glory roots. A year ago, we planted two ocean spray shrubs in this area and during this past year, we would return from time to time to untangle the morning glory that had grown onto the young shrubs. It seems to me that previous removal of ivy had encouraged the morning glory--I don't know if the morning glories were already in the ground but suppressed by the ivy or; the seeds were in the mulch we used after we pulled out the ivy or; if the birds dropped the seeds. In any event, I will also say by removing the ivy, we did encourage the columbine. See the first photo below. This little columbine is one of several from a good-sized columbine along the trail. I truly don't think these starts would have sprung up if the ground was still covered with ivy.

I had only brought enough cardboard to cover the area from ocean spray to ocean spray:

For mulch, we used the ivy compost pile nearby. Below, Jim is about to load the dead ivy. This pile was created at the work party for Earth Day 2015. The congregation at the Filipino church on 1st NE had offered their services and we wound up having a very large turnout of people. They pulled a lot of ivy!

The ivy was piled on site rather than hauled out of the park. I took a photo of the pile that was created then. You can compare this photo with the one above to see what happens to a large pile of ivy after 18 months or so.

And, after Jim hauled away the compost pile with Gary's help, the pile area looked like this:

Gary also lopped off some holly branches near the ocean spray shrubs. He draped them around the trunk of the holly tree, making sure that the cut branches were off the ground. Straight ahead of Gary is the Trail of Cedars. So, by draping the tree, we end up with a bit of camouflage to make the area less visible from the main trail

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 Below are couple of photos of the finished area. You can tell that this mulch is ivy cords!

Fall Planting Party

The photo above is the "before" picture of the area where we held our fall planting party on Sunday. Of course, before the "before" picture, the area was covered by blackberry and ivy, plus morning glory. Basically, it was just like the two sides of the cleared and mulched area. The large sword fern in front the fence was the only native, uncovered after we tackled the invasives. And, yes, that is our doomed young cedar, yanked out by the "camper" which could not be saved.

Nine adults and two kids participated in our planting party. We had good weather! Parks provided 6 serviceberry plants, 3 vine maples, 6 snowberries and 3 flowering red currents. (Thanks, Kirk!) The general plan for restoration recommended by Nelson is to plant understory first. Once they have created a canopy, groundcover can be planted. But because I had them, I also brought a tub of salal I dug up from my yard. If they die, that would be no big loss. In delivering the plants, Tony C. told Jim that currents are not good for white pine. So, Gary took them to the north side of Trail of Cedars where there are no white pine.

Here are some photos:

You can see the size of the plants we received. The serviceberry came in the 5 gallon pots.

We also worked to widen the area, on both sides.

Everyone picked a spot to work on.

A wider shot of the work party.

Refreshment time!

My guess is that Gary was still talking about the Cubs.

Finished area.

Janet and Frances had left by the time we did group photos. Yuto tossed a trowel up in the air.

..and caught it!

One more for the day!

Mission accomplished.