Tuesday, June 29, 2010

A cheerful youth group from St. John's Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota worked in the Asian Collections today

They brought cool temperatures but unfortunately, couldn't bring the cold front in until evening. It didn't seem to bother them though; on a previous trip to Mexico they'd worked at 115F, a dry 115 they assured me. In Washington we don't do dry heat.  No matter; they weeded, pruned, and hauled so that a lot of work got done that would have taken us weeks without their help. One group worked with Nathan removing dead branches from the conifers around the tool shed, one of the areas Nate has adopted. Last winter we removed ivy from the trees, invasive shrubs from the understory, and dead trees. This spring Nate sprayed the English Ivy as it put on new growth and pretty much all of it died. Today, removing the dead stubs, was the finishi
The balance of the group worked in the bottom of China Valley with Amanda (in the bottom photo) and me. We did large scale weeding in the last wild area in China Valley. Because CV is such a new area, there is still a large seedbank of weed seeds and it takes a lot more weeding than the areas that have been maintained for longer periods. Eventually we'll get it. Today went a long way. The participants seemed to enjoy the work; it's that time of year when the insect and spider populations explode and they seemed to enjoy discovering peculiar examples of arthropod diversity.
For lunch they walked back to Arbor House; I delivered their lunch and Lynn gave a tour of the daylily collection for all the volunteers. 

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