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December 13 2025 Work Party
Hide and seek with emerging Himalayan blackberry, digging a carpet of creeping buttercup, mulch newly blanketing a transect of earth where cut canes marked the spot of our latest root ball excavation. We use the first aid kit for the first time on a conifer, gently wrapping its snapped young trunk with a splint, an act of tender absurdity given the severity of the injury, but equally one of stubborn hope. Every being deserves care. We will not give up on this tree, this community, this land. The creek rushes by with news of the atmospheric river just passed. Hawks cry. I feel myself.
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November 8 2025 Work Party
Thank you to the City of Kenmore’s Climate Action Advisory Committee for partnering with Sno-King Watershed Council on our first planting of fall 2025! Community volunteers planted 120 native trees, shrubs, and ferns in an area we had cleared of Himalayan blackberry and other weeds. We saw two deer, unbound roots, climbed on logs. We dug holes, hauled mulch. Exchanged numbers. In common with everything.
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March 8 2025 Work Party
You are a gift.
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November 23 2024 Work Party
Thirteen loppers, 11 clippers, 10 root slayers, five little shovels. Four hundred harvested and supplied willow stakes, 116 potted plants laid out by the maintenance contractor. One snake skin, three copies of The Serviceberry, four steady goat feet. 105 Scirpus microcarpus, an unspecified number of harvested willow whips, an uncountable blanket of red cedar seedlings huddled under tiny rectangular skylights. Two fleeting moments of rain, so light it barely whispered. Three hours well spent.
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November 2 2024 Work Party
On the precipice. All together now.
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February 24 2024 Work Party
Some of my favorite people in one of my favorite places.
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January 13 2024 Work Party
Wool socks, silk long underwear, fleece pullover, down coat under lined ski parka. Snow pants and insulated skirt. Mittens, scarf, hat. All of this enough to hold body heat generated by movement. Root slayer as spear, frozen ground splits to reveal dark, soft soil. Conifers frozen in pots planted in the mulch pile, heat generated by thermophillic bacteria releases roots and soil, enough to get a few trees from pots to earth. Determination. Mini-cardboard drive. Initiative. When I am short on hope, I watch how you move through the world and it returns to me in abundance.
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November 24 2023 Work Party (four years)
This is what it looks like to be four.
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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…
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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…
