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May 23 2026 Work Party
Holiday weekend and you showed up. A group of Yale alumni. Returning friends. New friends. Buttercup, dock, reed canary grass, yellow flag iris, bindweed, thistle, Himalayan blackberry, herb Robert, ivy. So many weeds. Nootka rose, salmonberry, osoberry, Western red cedar, Douglas fir, twinberry, snowberry, sedges, rushes, sword fern, bracken fern, lady fern, red alder, big leaf maple, vine maple. So many native plants to steward. A gift, all of it, including you.
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March 22 2025 Work Party
Mallards, American robins, Spotted Towhees. An otter, a salamander. Raptors, maybe red-tailed hawks? Willows staked along the south bank just weeks ago budding, osoberry, red elderberry, and snowberry becoming green. We reached the tree that a month ago seemed so far away, revealed a goat track hidden by brambles, pulled barbed wire out of the ground. A collapsing empire, cancer, hospice. These things cannot be left behind, but despite their presence, for a moment that stretches to hours, I feel ease.
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March 15 2025 Work Party
The best problem to have is not enough root slayers.
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March 8 2025 Work Party
You are a gift.
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February 24 2024 Work Party
Some of my favorite people in one of my favorite places.
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November 24 2023 Work Party (four years)
This is what it looks like to be four.
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March 4 2023 Planting Work Party
“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” –Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachman The feedback feels personal and harsh, landing hard after more than a year of working diligently to be present to partner needs and desires. The path with this child feels dark and thorny. And this world. We cannot seem to change in the face of overwhelming evidence that things are not well. Delusion gets in the way of clear seeing, of knowing the questions to ask, of discernment. We grasp for the one perfect something we believe will erase all our suffering. We cause ourselves so much suffering. “This moment or this place…
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March 3 2023 Preparing for Planting
85 native plants wait for human hands to place them tenderly in the ground.
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One month!
It’s been a little over a month since we planted a Douglas fir in our original restoration area at Wallace Swamp Creek Park. Ki is growing well! We are so delighted.
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first baby trees
Quinn, our favorite City of Kenmore parks person, planted four baby Western Red Cedars–our first native plantings!–in our second restoration area recently. One of the plantings, a grouping of a baby and a baby baby, got a protective cage today, and the rest we will monitor for grazing to determine if caging will be necessary for all the new plantings in this area. A big, heartfelt thank you to Whitney Neugebauer and Whale Scout for donating the cage materials, teaching me how to construct and install a cage, and continuing to inspire me with her passion and heart for killer whales, salmon, healthy watersheds, and experimenting her way through this…
