This is what it looks like to be four.
November 24 2023 Work Party (four years)
October 28 2023 Work Party
The first trees of this planting season are in new homes, tucked on the east side of Swamp Creek before it bends to find the Sammamish River. Douglas fir, Western hemlock, Grand fir, and Sitka spruce removed from pots, roots unbound and draped over mounds of soil in deep holes, rocks sifted and piled nearby, compost mixed with the earth we found and pressed firmly down. Gentle tugs at the base of 30 trunks confirm they are all securely tucked. One tree in not quite the right home. We decide to move ki a foot over, safely out of the way of passing wheelbarrows full of Himalayan blackberry and English hawthorn debris. Mulch is laid over all the compost we spread, thickness sacrificed, the work left undone reaching us into the future, binding us to return to this place with intention. We leave with incantations of joy, wishing that all beings be well, wrapping ourselves and the new baby trees with love.
September 23 2023 Work Party
Digging blackberry regrowth, felling English hawthorn. Gently tending to trailing blackberry and a baby sword fern, whispering with an adolescent Western red cedar. A thin layer of compost, a generously overlapped layer of cardboard, a thick layer of mulch. Some cardboard left bare, puddles gathered. Young people with heads together, talk babbling over talk, laughter, connection, so much love bouncing from you to me to root slayers to conifers to cottonwoods, everywhere, then rain. Light at first, then heavier, it soaks us, pelts upturned faces, drips from leaves, soaks into soil, seeps into roots, grows us, grows everything.