I intended only to move canes previously cut, but it is so hard to stop tending sometimes. I was mindful of possible bird nesting above and below. All things matter. Including you.
nesting season
Our community work parties came to an abrupt pandemic pause at the end of February 2020 and did not resume until fall, so this year brings a new consideration: How to move forward with habitat restoration without disrupting nesting season?
Work in our original area is slowing as we maintain what we have done, and we have just barely started on a new area overgrown with Himalayan blackberry. Birdsong–from chickadees, robins, juncos, and so many birds I have yet to learn–already fills the air, telling me I’m really too late to clear more canes, but I am desperate not to lose these coming months of work in the park.
We must mow down all the blackberry canes now! I think. I must do it in this first bit of March so that we can dig root balls through the rest of spring and summer! It has to be right now and fast and there is no time to spare because, if I am honest with myself, I am already too late and shouldn’t be doing this at all!
A power tool would be just the thing, I think, and so I rent one with visions of mowing all the canes running the length of the park north of the parking lot entrance. It is a gas powered tool, which I vaguely know to be horrible, but I go ahead anyway in my desperation and rush.
The tool is not hard to master, but it is heavy and loud and malodorous. I accidentally cut an ossoberry plant, hidden in the thicket of Himalayan blackberry, that I mean to keep. The Himalayan canes, thicker than my thumb and barbed for battle, protect themselves by bowing far from where where they sprout from the ground, making it difficult for me to see and reach them there. I end up trying to whack them in the air with the round, spinning blade. It is not how the tool was intended to be used and is, unsurprisingly, inefficient. Within minutes of struggling with the canes and tool, I feel nauseous from the fumes. Still, I press on for a while.
And then I surrender.
I lay down the power tool, pick up the hand clippers, and move much closer to the canes. I am able to work more precisely to protect the native plants we want to keep. I seem no slower–and perhaps even more effective–with the hand clippers than with the power tool, and they make for quieter work. Contemplative. I can hear the birdsong again and the sounds of families enjoying far off places in the park. I feel the air enveloping me and something deep within me vibrating in connection with the plants and animals nearby. I am satisfied to be working like this. It feels like the right kind of hard. It feels just right.
As we leave the park, I feel the lessons of my experience with the power tool surface: Perhaps this work of tending to the earth is not meant to be fast in the way we have come to expect things to be in our modern capitalist society.
Perhaps the lessons of the power tool can be generalized beyond the park.
Perhaps slow and steady, in tune to the natural cycles of the seasons and life, is how this was meant to be all along. How have we gotten so far in practice from this idea? And how can we get back? Perhaps the lesson is that it is okay, smart even, to give up attachment to what isn’t working and find another way.
Perhaps the lesson is that there need be no rush, that trusting in ourselves and in the wisdom of accumulated knowledge can lead us, in good time, where we need to be.
February 27 2021 Work Party
We’ve started removal of a second large patch of Himalayan blackberry at Wallace Swamp Creek Park! What satisfying progress can be made by small, dedicated groups of people. What a balm such kinship is during this pandemic time.
We found gifts in every bit of earth reclaimed–Oregon grape growing all this time under the thick blackberry bramble, brilliantly orange witches butter on the side of a decaying stump, luscious green moss blanketing a fallen tree.
And then a walk to the creek revealed another gift: a pair of hooded mergansers, surfing the riffle and then coming to rest in a pool created by sediment deposits, just being themselves, seemingly unaware of their beauty and the delight they brought to those who witnessed.
What a gift it all is.
hatching a planting plan
I met a friend and neighbor, Jeremy Jones, at Wallace Swamp Creek Park today to dream about planting in our restoration area. We surveyed the surrounding vegetation, noting which trees and shrubs were native and which were not. We assessed the existing canopy and assigned one area to shade and another to sun. I had squished through the clover-covered field to our mulched area, mud coating my boots, a trail of size 7 pools of water left in my wake, and I remembered what time of year the ground is saturated and what time of year it is dry. I learned that a simple hole can be useful to assess soil type and condition and that even slight changes in elevation can make a difference in how much groundwater fills that hole. While I dug, Jeremy paced to measure how much space we have to plant. We talked browse protection–methods of keeping rabbits and deer from nibbling away young plantings–everything from plastic tubing to metal caging to sacrificial bovine blood.
We considered what ten species might suit the space, and a couple wandered through with dogs and grandchildren–one five years old with a backpack large enough for him to curl into, one seven years old and one inch away from being allowed on a carnival ride that would flip you upside down and make you lose the contents of your pockets if you didn’t follow the rules to empty them first or the contents of your stomach if you were a grown up who could no longer tolerate being flung about at great speeds. The story of an injury was recounted, a face mask ingeniously used as a makeshift bandage. Connections were made with people and water and land as past and present mingled.
Then the grandparents herded the kids to dinner, Jeremy took leave, and I scoured the mulch for evidence of blackberry growth and dug out some of the largest root balls I have ever seen.
When I could see no more new Himalayan blackberry growth to ferret out, I squished through the field to the parking lot and, as is my custom, turned to look at our restoration area. Crows on their nightly migration to Bothell cawed to one another in the sky above, a robin pulled a worm out of the muddy ground, and for one brilliant moment I could feel it–my connection to a greater whole. There was no separation between me and the mud and the birds and the trees and even the Himalayan blackberry canes we have worked so diligently to remove from this one small patch of earth. I felt in my bones what I believe–that we are all, everything and everyone, deeply connected.
new year check in
Himalayan blackberry cane growth in our restoration area remains suppressed. Paint sticks guard over growing baby ferns. Rainfall is held by the earth, allowing it to gently enter the next phase of the water cycle.
All is well at Wallace Swamp Creek Park as we turn the calendar and continue our travels around the sun.
November 12 2020 Work Party
One of us tends to a tree by unearthing the Himalayan blackberry root balls that have snuggled under its base. She follows the root balls to their smallest ends, untangling roots like filaments from the soil, excavating them with the care of an archeologist preserving what has been found. To watch her is to see love in action.
One of us sings with the unbridled beauty and joy of the birds she calls by name, all of them family to her. To gather with her and her dear human family with purpose during this time, to hear her voice across the field as we work is to be held in the warmth of true community.
One by one we arrived to do work that adds up to much more than we could have achieved alone.
This is everything, and I am grateful.