The right tool for the right job, it's a great adage. And life on five acres really brings it home. I suit up in my Carhartts when I head outside to stay warm, avoid cuts and be comfy while keeping up with nature. Now my favorite Carhartt use is for visual facilitation. This toolbelt is the right tool for holding my refillable Neuland markers, my pencil and eraser. Again, all I need to keep up with the conversation! It also gives me a little bit of home when working out on the road. What's your favorite tool?

Walking up to Garfield High School in Seattle last week, I was greeted by at least 10 welcoming students. I was there attending the "Listening Session" for the Great Outdoor Initiative, one of the stops in this countrywide tour by the Department of the Interior.

Talking to folks before the introduction began I was delighted to hear about the youth summit earlier that day. The highlights for me in the introductory remarks were the Native American blessing given by a local tribe (including a very articulate princess!) and the hilarious welcoming speech by an Garfield senior.

It felt a little different than the typical public hearing. And there was a great diversity of people there from old to young, dark to light. Nice to see our natural world has a good looking fan base.

The high school auditorium was filled with a few hundred conservation supporters, government officials of all levels, environmental groups and I don't know who else. We were divided into groups according to numbers on our name tags and that's when I exited stage left. I just wanted to see if this was going to be anything different. I'd love to hear how those break out groups went, I was just glad to see the introduction and hear some great positive news out of the mouths of high school students.

You can participate by sharing your ideas, commenting on other peoples, promoting and demoting causes online at the Idea Jam:

http://ideas.usda.gov/ago/ideas.nsf/

Yes, there's some trash-talk going on as well. But at least it's refreshing to see real conservation issues being discussed at this level. I see no word how long this site is going to be up but I would imagine until the end of August. The first report by the Initiative is due November 15. 

Comments can be emailed to: ago@ios.doi.gov.

Or go analog and submit by hand: Department of the Interior, America's Great Outdoors, 1849 C Street NW, Mailstop 3156, Washington DC  20240.

Love this one in a series by the Cascade Land Conservancy!

In early June, a colleague from The Nature Conservancy, Lisa Younger came to visit. I was so excited to have her and her land stewardship expertise here to look at my restoration projects. Dismay overwhelmed me when we looked at the reed canary grass removal project. Looking at the 1000 square foot patch from a distance, it looked like the grass was breaking through the barrier. We didn't have adequate footwear to investigate further. I was too depressed to look at it the rest of the summer, there wasn't much I could do.

In October, I sucked it up, put on my muck boots and went to explore. I am very happy to report very healthy sprouting on the stakes and budding plant diversity! Bullrush, carex, watercress and more were filling in every available space on top of the fabric and the willow stakes were busting open (thank you Sound Native Plants for having such healthy stakes!). Truly a thing of beauty.

It is now December and I wonder how it's changing in these freezing temperatures and do I have to remove that geotextile fabric? I cannot for the life of me see how to remove it. Abel from the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust advised me in the beginning to leave it there for at least three years. It has been there since May 08 and will be under at least a foot of soil and plant material by then!

In the meantime, time to clear out my native plant nursery that's been growing since last winter this spring. Strong backs welcome! Think of it this way, it's cheaper than a health club...
 

Last year (2008) about this time, I began my efforts to remove a roughly 1000-square foot patch of reed canary grass by covering it with geotextile fabric. With the help of my friend Todd Hardman, we got it done. Some grass naturally started sneaking out the sides during the summer months but I figured I could just cover that up this spring. But when it started growing through the fabric, I realized just what I was up against: nature. Hard to fight a plant's ability to spread and grow.

What sounded like a perfectly easy process I realize is a whole lot of work! Yet onward we go with adjusted expectations. The next recommended step: shading out the grass.

This spring (2009), I got the willow stakes, first from the Whatcom County Conservation district and thought oh, 50 should do it. Wrong. It's a number's game. I trotted off to Olympia and picked up 200 more willow stakes to finish the job. Threw in 25 dogwood stakes just to mix it up.




Happy to see them sprouting. But will it actually "shade-out" reed canary grass? We'll see!