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June 14 2025 Work Party
A duckling worked with us for a time, nibbling on plants while we weeded. A heron perched on a nearby log. Some of us dug into a thick stand of reed canary grass, others of us combed over an area we had worked before, clipping and pulling reed canary grass from among native rushes and sedges. We ferreted out thistle, blackberry, and mullein, lifted bags of plant clippings up to the bridge, pushed them across the boardwalk, drove them across the street to be composted. A perfect day of quiet resistance.
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April 5 2025 Work Party
We took an excursion to the west side of ƛ̕ax̌ʷadis Park. It was good.
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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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January 25 2025 Work Party
Crisp cold bright blue sky. Himalayan blackberry canes cut. Reed canary grass trimmed. Tree climbed. You hid. You were found.
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August 17 2024 Work Party
Field trip to ƛ̕ax̌ʷadis (Tl’ awh-ah-dees) Park.
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June 1 2024 Work Party
We took a field trip this week to the main entrance of ƛ̕ax̌ʷadis Park for a special restoration work party in partnership with the City of Kenmore, Confluence Environmental Company, and Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group. We worked in a wetland area on the peninsula between Swamp Creek and the Sammamish River to remove reed canary grass, yellow flag iris, and Himalayan blackberry so that native rushes, sedges, and willow can continue to establish themselves there. It was a treat to work in a different location and off the boardwalk and an honor to tend to a wetland. We’re looking forward to going back in three months!
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March 9 2024 Work Party
Cool, tentative rain. A line of sentinel blackberry canes, dug. Root balls, gnarled and long. Goat neighbors munch tender shoots of reed canary grass. Entwined Western red cedars and ferns in their new homes. Beautiful child dancing through the planting, hiding from the wind, noticing everything.
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July 29 2023 Work Party
New elders, teens known and new to each other, all new to me. You trickle in, each of you right on time, growing us from six to twenty at our peak. We disentangle layers of black plastic sheeting from roots, wrestle blackberry canes from a conifer and elderberry, activate the pungent sent of Herb Robert as we pull it from the ground. Goats arrive, stunning slot-pupilled eyes pulling us from shade to sun. Our happiness increases by 50%. In the end, reed canary grass stands tall, thistles sharp, there is a sea of blackberry before us, but there is only discernment, no discouragement. This is the work before us. We…
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April 23 2023 Work Party Earth Day
“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.” –former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson In 1970, Gaylord Anton Nelson, a United States Senator from Wisconsin, organized the first Earth Day as a national demonstration to raise awareness about environmental issues. At the time, there was no Environmental Protection Agency, no Clean Air Act, no Clean Water Act, no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect the environment. People across the country rallied on April 22, 1970, spurring the United States to create the Environmental Protection Agency by the end of that year, and that day, April 22, is now an annual celebration that honors the…
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November 25 2022 Work Party (three years)
A song for us. We belong together — for these past three years, for many more. For always. *** We had a special guest at our third anniversary work party — constant, steady, wonderful, life sustaining rain. We felt the drumming of ki on hoods and hats, watched water meet wetland, observed ki seeking Swamp Creek in sinuous, braided strands over grass and rock and mud. All the while, clippers and shovels met blackberry canes and earth, carving out space for hidden ferns holding on and exiled plants we will one day invite back. Robins skittered across wet earth, snails nestled in the reed canary grass. It was wet and…
