Free the Fern had a lovely invasive pull with 15 volunteers coming out to help today. Despite forecast of 98% chance of rain, we were blessed with a perfectly, cool, dry day.
Our focus today was on removing small weeds that were sprouting up around the native plants in the upper triangle on the Red Alder Trail. This area, where the trail forks, is the site of hundreds of native plants, such as fringecup, sword fern, and Douglas fir, which were planted by volunteers in October 2022. Unfortunately, small weeds, like chickweed, common nipplewort, and herb Robert, had begun to move in and crowd out the plantings. So, our hardworking volunteers got to work removing the weed growth. It was a lot of work, on our hands an knees, but also fun, as we got to chat with each other as we connected with the earth.
After about 45 minutes of work, we took a break together. All enjoyed a bit of an energy boost from the juice, cookies, and hot chocolate.
We were then ready to get back at it. Most of the volunteers decided to move down into the “lower triangle” area of the Red Alder Trail. This area will be the site of our future Native Food Forest Site (to be planted in Oct 2023). While most of the large invasives have already been removed from the site at our previous pulls, there was some blackberry regrowth and some ivy that remained hidden beneath a large Western Red Cedar. Volunteers got right in there, crawling beneath the tree branches to get out the invasive plants.
Overall the pull was a great success! We succeeded in clearing 1,440 L of invasive plants (4 green bins worth)! Thanks so much to our 15 volunteers: Alicia, Alyha, Annette, Barbara, Carla, Chinonso, Damian, Erin, Genevieve, Grace, Ku, Liam, Lucy, Martin, & Tom.
