holyoutlaw

The valiant crew: Loren, Drexie, Morrie, Ryan, and Tasha (left to right).

The day was cloudy, but dry; the temperature cool enough to get us moving, but not warm enough to make us uncomfortable. The ground was wet from the March rains and we were all eager to get some work in. All in all, this made for a very productive work party.

Loren tidies the mulch pile.

We started by tidying up the mulch pile. We’d ordered it last summer for a big project that cooler heads decided should be done by people experienced with steep slope work but have been nibbling at it ever since. This has allowed us to do some low-priority but still important mulching — such as along the 90th St. edge.

Drexie, Ryan, and Tasha spread the mulch.

This doesn’t get much run off, but it’s a visible little slice of the park — not only the people who live up on 25th Ave. drive past it, but the moms’n'dads picking up their children from North Beach Elementary park along the other side of the street.

The mulching didn’t take long at all, which allowed us to go to the newly cleared area at 850 feet. We started working in this area in February, and we’ll work our way upstream until we meet where EarthCorps left off last year. In the fall and winter, we’ll plant it up.

We picked this area because it’s fairly dry and stable, and so overgrown with blackberry it’s a monoculture.

Everything at Loren’s feet is blackberry cane; rising up behind him are the brambles.

One nice side effect of the clearing was that it made more of the park that’s across the stream visible, such as this grove of skunk cabbage.

Before we cleared the blackberry, it was completely obscured. The area we’re working in is also a big gap in the canopy, so it will be a good place to prioritize conifer reintroduction.

In April, we’ll continue working here. We have to balance where we work against a couple logistics: Don’t want to work too close to the stream bank until the summer, when it’s dryer; and don’t want to work in areas with a lot of piggyback or Pacific waterleaf until those have bloomed and died back. One lesson (among many) I’ve learned repeatedly is that a gradual approach is best, to take some time and learn the lay of the land and get to know the processes of the forest better.

Our next work party is April 26th, 9 a.m. to noon. As ever, we’ll meet at the main entrance to the park, at 90th St. and 24th Ave. All ages and skill sets are welcome.

If you can’t join us for a work party, you can support our work by making a donation to the Seattle Parks Foundation and earmarking it for North Beach Park. All proceeds donated will go to support the Friends of North Beach Park in our restoration efforts.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

We had a great work party on Saturday, 2/23. The weather was perfect, several people commented as they arrived that we had really lucked out. The predictions were for rainy and cold, we got dry and warm.

We had a visit from the Natural Area Crew, which gave us a good energy boost.

Theodor and Tod clean up some fallen alders.

Some alders had fallen across the trail several months ago, and this was the perfect job for them. The trees were so big, they had to send a guy out for larger chainsaws. But they took care of the job, which was a big help and a big relief to get it taken care of.

They also helped with cutting and “painting” some of the holly and laurel. If you cut either of these woody invasives, they just resprout. If you uproot anything larger than about 1″ diameter with a weed wrench, you leave chunks of root in the ground… which resprout into several trees, worsening the problem. So the only recourse is to cut and paint.

Tod (left) and Darryl (middle) cut down hollly and laurel, and hand it off to Julie (right).

But there were plenty of volunteers as well. Not counting the NAC, we had 20 people there, including four students from Ballard HS getting community service hours. We also had a good crew working on putting survival rings around trees deep in the park. This is the most physically demanding work we currently do, and involves careful clambering on a steep slope. Generally volunteers aren’t allowed to work on slopes steeper than 40 degrees, but we only send experienced workers and don’t do any heavy-duty invasive removal. This crew put rings around 15 trees, which is a pretty good count for about three hours of work.

We also did about two or three hundred feet of invasive removal, particularly star ivy. This breaks apart very easily, and yes, it resprouts, so we’ll probably be doing some more removal in the same spot for a little while.

Here’s a picture of the remnants of the work party — a number of people had left by then. We had finished with cleaning up and putting away the tools and were just gabbing a little. But left to right in the picture is Julie, Drexie, Darryl (NAC), Morry, Tod (NAC), Theodor (NAC), Doug, and Sylvie.

We’ll see you again on March 23, same time and location: 9 a.m. to noon at the main entrance to the park, 90th St. and 24th Ave. NW

Thank you to everyone who participated, it’s always fun and exhilarating work. There are a few more pictures from the work party on Flickr.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.