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!
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