Healing Gardens

Body:

Date: 10/2 Time: .5 hours

I came to school on my lunch break to take samples of a mushroom (Chicken of the Woods) in at my site.  Loni and I are going to try and cultivate it in other areas of the habitat.  I took it home after work and will be making cultures from my sample.

 Date: 10/7 Time: 2 hours

TOTAL: 2.5

Loni, Kimberly, and I met at our site to discuss how we were going to proceed.  We took photographs of the sites and tried to ID some of the plants.  Of course, we knew the Lodgepole Pines, and the Chicken of the Woods, but there was one plant we could not ID.  Hopefully, one of us will find out soon.  I also want to ID the grasses in my Dry Woodland area.  Loni and I discussed removing the dead pine and wondered what we should do with the spindly one in the back.  There is a fir in that area and I am not sure if it is on the border of the Riparian Hillside or not.  We will meet again on the 13th.

 Date: 10/8 Time: 1.5 hours

TOTAL:  4

I drove to the Skokomish area to hike around and look for mushroom samples for the Longhouse project.  I did not find anything but some small variety of oyster mushroom.

 Date: 10/9 Time: 2 hours

TOTAL: 6

My husband taught me how to culture the Chicken of the Woods mushrooms that I had gotten samples of.  I will talk about this in more detail later.  We prepared the cultures today and will hope for the best.

 Date: 10/21 Time: 1 hours

TOTAL: 7

I went to our site to measure the area and pull out the dead tree.  Unfortunately, I am going to need some better tools and some help.  I will probably return to the site later this week.  I also took some grass samples and looked for more plants that might be living on our site.  I believe it is mostly weeds and some berry vines.  I am going to do more research tomorrow, but am having trouble finding habitat information for dry woodlands.

 Date: 10/22 Time: 5 hours

TOTAL:  12

Alisa, Heather, Ingrid, and I met today at Merilee Petersen's house to work on her garden.  She is the most wonderful woman!  We shoveled, raked, pulled, and dumped all afternoon.  During these four weeks that we will be helping her, we will be putting her garden to bed for the winter.  We started by filling wheelbarrows with Skokomish "fish and chips" and spreading them through parts of her garden.  We also filled in the spaces between the stepping stones and cleaned them off.  Many Peony plants were relocated, including one that was from Italy and over 100 years old!  Large chunks of stone were also relocated to continue a walking path.  It was a wonderful, active afternoon and well worth all of our efforts.  Merilee made us a delicious supper of Salmon, fresh corn on the cobb from her garden, and salad. 

Date: 10/29 Time: 5 hours

TOTAL: 17

Alisa, Heather, Ingrid, and I met again today to work on Merilee's garden.  Hard work!  Ingrid and Alisa put the Dahlias to bed, while Heather spent the afternoon spreading compost.  I also spread compost, but ended up weeding a large area under one of the trees in the garden.  To my discontent, I cannot remember the name of the tree.  We plan on putting down cardboard and compost on the rest of the garden next week.

Date: 11/5/06 Time: 6 hours

TOTAL: 23

I went looking for Pipsissewa today and ended up at the Hamma Hamma river on a hiking trail by the campgrounds.  I found lots of it.  I ended up there because I wasn't sure where Marja was talking about along the highway.  I will talk to her about that.  I need to find out if I can harvest from this new area I found, but am still considering not putting it at the site as it seems to like shade much more than open areas.  I need more research for that, but so far, that is what I have found.  I couldn't believe how much of it there was.  I also found some Pear Oyster mushrooms to harvest.  There isn't enough to eat, but they will make good cultures.  We are moving forward!

Date: 11/12/06 Time: 2.5 hours

TOTAL: 25.5

I am doing more research on our habitat.  I am finding more plants that like to be there and have found a wonderful reference site online.  It is called the Northwest Habitat Institute.  It is an entire site dedicated to habitat research in the Northwest.  I was excited to find this and it will be giving us much information on our site.  I also started writing up notes on the plants and typing up our outline for the presentation.

Date: 11/19/06 Time: 1.5 hours

TOTAL: 27

Doing plant research on the plants I have chosen to go into the site and have almost completed my notes.  Not too much going on, but it takes a while.

 

Date: 12/1/06 Time: 4 hours

TOTAL: 31

Loni and I met tonight to finish putting our presentation together and get it online.  I know to do this the week before now.  Ugh.  We agreed on what to put into the presentation and she did a little more research on the mushrooms.  Then, we spent the evening getting it onto this website in preparation for tomorrow's presentation.

 

Date: 11/4/06 Time: 3 hours

TOTAL: 34

I forgot to add this in further up.  I spent part of the afternoon helping Loni and pull sod out of the grassland and we also pulled up the dead tree at the woodland.  We went over the plants that had been donated and Daeg came over to look at the woodland for me.  He let me know what some of the grasses were and gave me some ideas as to what needed to be done.  Unfortunately, I am going to have to sod the area by hand.