July Outings

I was out on the Meridian side on July 2nd, 9th, 23rd and 30th. Jim and Gary were there on those days, too, and also on the 16th.

On the 2nd, we noted signs of human activity near the Southern Forest. Whether it was "camping" or not was hard to tell. Really, not much to do about it but toss out the stuff.

Just litter, if you ask me!

More litter...

Jim started to worry that we'd have a repeat of the 2015 drought so we wheelbarrowed water down to the Southern Forest. Also, he knew someone digging oxalis out of their yard so he brought that with him and we planted most of it in the Southern Forest and a bit below the fence by our most recent planting. I'm a little worried that it's the wrong season to be doing this but given that it was free and it would have been thrown away anyway, it seemed worth the gamble.

On the 9th, after more watering, we worked along the trail and near our Jobox, pulling morning glory off of natives. Here's one Indian plum that was a little taller by the time I yanked off most of the bindweed.

My mind wanders off sometimes. I had just freed a vine maple of some morning glory and started to remove bindweed off of what I thought was a bracken fern. The fronds of bracken fern are easily knocked down so I was careful to snip off some of the bindweed and unwind others off the frond. I was doing this mindlessly when all of the sudden I realized I was removing bindweed not off of a bracken fern but poison hemlock. Oops. This is in the area close to Meridian and our Jobox. I didn't realize the hemlock was in that spot and with so much overgrowth I had only seen a frond sticking out. Too much stuff all around it so I didn't bother digging it out.

On the 23rd, we watered a few things on the north side of the main trail. We also took a good look at the area. I was not happy to see that a western hemlock very near the main trail entrance had been pruned. Also, there was a mangled salmonberry. A cedar on the other side of the trail was also pruned and the branches tossed aside. I emailed Kirk about this.

North of the trail, there is a five-needle pine that appeared to have the rust disease.

I spotted a young horse chestnut in the area and got Gary to saw it down. I also talked Gary into yanking out a small English hawthorne. That took longer since we hadn't brought a shovel or even a trowel. But we got rid of two invasive trees that day.

The 30th was a short work day for me. Discovered another large branch had fallen off of the dead birch tree, smashing into an ocean spray we had planted and the already damaged vine maple, which we had staked. It's as if we planted the vine maple in a bad luck spot since it had suffered previously from a branch falling on it. After staking, it had produced a new leader but the latest blow was another setback. Ideally, all the branches on the birch that will fall on it have done so. The culprit is on the right below.

Later in the day, I was on the 1st NE side. Someone bent back a branch on a witch hazel in the Arboretum. Perhaps it annoyed someone because the branch stuck out too much over the lawn.