Field work on Friday and Saturday was exhausting; projects keep moving forward but there is soooooo much more to be done! We had some success on Friday afternoon with the connecting trail. It is such a pretty stretch that you have to love it; but we pushed ahead and then got turned around and then couldn’t pin down the exact direction we had to move in; not good when the field work leader gets confused!!! Google Earth (thank God for Google Earth) solved that later that evening but we now we still need to cut a couple of hundred feet through some major brush and brambles; we can do it if we put the right kind of crew together for one or two days.
Next day (Sat. 4-24) was Arbor Day at the center so we changed routines and planted 200 shrubs and trees with visiting families, youth groups and of course the scouts. It was a blast and the St. Johns students did all you could ever ask of them; they dug the holes for the little ones and let them get the thrill of putting in the tree and putting in the final cover and water; it is a really tough planting site ( below are before and during photos) just cleared of all of the porcelain berry and bittersweet so we’ll have to give them some extra attention this growing season to prevent vines from coming back to quickly; going to take a couple of growing seasons until this site can stand on its own.
In the afternoon we took a long walk around the entire preserve to see how the work from last season held up. We got back to the amazing freshwater spring; we gave the bank a light trim and watched the flow for more than 20 minutes; it is always a tough photograph in that you are shooting through a moving current of water trying to show the active spring flow (-that’s a thought - maybe this is the place I should try out a first video clip???). the digital picture still came out pretty good (although it can't show the active flow) so I'm including it here; everyone loved the spring especially the idea that you could drink from it as it came out of the ground; The water is always cold, clear as could be and absolutely delicious; I also got a couple of nice scenic shots of the valley landscape (first photo above) and of course a couple of photos of the students at days end. It was a long, hot, and exhausting day but we saw a good bit of the preserve and did quite a bit of work along the way.
We are way ahead of last year at this time so this may be turn out to a great field work season.
Thanks to students from both classes who worked so hard this week-end.
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