Date: Jan. 19 Time: 2 hrs Activities: met with anastarr at site, walked around and discussed plants, talked about ideas for future development, raked path of fallen leaves. Learning: next time, i will need to put more mulch down on the path (when is a good time to put mulch down?). my site has a different characteristic to it than several months ago, it feels different in a way that is so distinct to this season. i can identify plants/trees/shrubs by just their twigs by noticing what plants i know by heart in my site look like right now and comparing them to other plants i do not know right away and thus identifying them.
Cumulative hours: 2 hrs
Week three
Date: Jan. 24 Time: 5 hrs Activities: went to Gifts Garden with Adam, Ciara, Alix, and Anna from 8am-12pm. raked leaves, removed some red alder saplings, spent time connecting with state of garden & discussing different plants . for the rest of the afternoon Anna, Alix, and I removed the inner bark of the useable alders to make medicine. Learning: i never thought that digging up a tree could be so moving, but i will save that for my reflection of this past week. the smaller saplings we had dug up did not have enough inner bark to be useable, so there is an interesting observation there -- allowing alders to grow a little before harvesting is a good idea, if you can allow it! also this was the first time i had ever prepared plants for medicine use with other people and it was a very powerful experience. i enjoyed the calm, positive energy in anna's living room as we learned how to lightly skin the outer bark off and learned to see where the inner bark ends and woodiness begins. we were a little uncertain at first if we were doing it correctly but i felt like the trees guided us as we worked. it was a really great day and i look forward to working with the red alder more and bringing its medicine into my life.
Date: Jan. 28 Time: 3 hrs Activities: met with Anastarr and Michelle. worked at our site. I removed some fallen leaves from some of the interior portions so we could get a feel for the ground and what we have to work with. Michelle and I worked on reestablishing the path via temporary means, though we will soon collect more rocks for the path. Learning: I am uncertain as to whether or not it is a good idea for me to have removed some of the fallen leaf cover. Doesn't the soil need the nutrients and they keep the weeds down? Maybe when we get some things planted soon I will put some leaf mulch where it looks needed to keep the soil in good condition. I am feeling a lot more directed and certain of my work at my site this quarter. Materials available * Tools at the LHG - very useful, some not in great condition but still useable. * Notebook for site - Sharing the notebook for our site with Shady Seasonal Creek site has prevented us from having a chance to look at it this past week so I cannot comment on the usefulness of it at this time. * Michelle's connections - Michelle has various friends/relatives with large areas of land that she thinks would be good resources for us to get some of our plants from; potentially very useful, depending on plant populations. * Class fee fund - we may need to end up purchasing some plants (Oceanspray? False Solomon's Seal? Goat'sbeard?); probably not entirely useful since amount is no doubt limited.
Cumulative hours: 8 hrs (10 total)
Week four
Date: Feb. 4 Time: 2 hrs Activities: Went to LHG and sat for a long while, talking with the cedar and observing the site. Did not do too much physical work as I recognized it was a time for sitting and listening instead of action. Learning: Cedars have such a wide spectrum of uses -- all the way from powerful medicine to daily essential items. The theme of our site could be in one of these directions, perhaps? Focusing on the cedar will bring more guidance.
Cumulative hours: 2 hrs (12 total)
Week five
Date: Feb. 11 Time: 5 hrs Activities: Went to sayuyay garden with Anna and Adam. Cut back Lemon balm, Lavender; obtained a handsaw and sawed down three Red alders. Will make more medicine with the alders. Learning: There was already new growth at the ground level with some plants! That was unexpected.
Date: Feb. 12 Time: 1 hr Activities: Met with Michelle and Anastarr to look at the notebook for our site. Discussed site introduction. Learning: The notebook is not as useful as I thought it would be; it has a LOT of information in it and is pretty overwhelming. Not all of it is applicable since it includes the Shady Seasonal Creek and it is unclear which plants are in our site and which are in that area. I feel this notebook needs some reorganization in order to be useful for future students…Also could not find the spreadsheet with Twana names. Cumulative hours: 6 hrs (18 total)
Week six
Date: Feb. 17 Time: 2 hrs Activities: worked with Anastarr at LHG. worked mostly on "forest clearings". raked leaves, debris, weeded, pruned salmonberry, pulled up some of the coltsfoot that is already coming up in some places! Learning: some of the salmonberry appeared to be dead, no thorns, colorless, very hollow and dry pith, twigs snapped off with hardly any effort. is this just dormant or really dead? it seemed to be mostly the case right next to the western redcedar; my thought was perhaps it does not get enough light there. I have been trying to think of how to cluster the salmonberry in that lower forest clearing -- it would be nice to have access to walk IN and around the western redcedar; michelle made a little opening in the stones to the cedar and it is a great idea.
Date: Feb. 18 Time: 2 hrs Activities: went to LHG alone in the morning, continued work I did not get to finish the previous day. Sat for a bit under the cedar and brainstormed arrangements of plants. Learning: I went on a walk to the inlet beach and found a great place to collect a few rocks for our path! It's campus property, so I assume this would be ok with permission of the river & rocks?
Cumulative hours: 4 hrs (22 total)
Week seven
Date: Feb. 25 Time: 2 hrs Activities: Came by myself to LHG site and observed spring coming all around! Took pictures of all the new plants coming up, cleared more leaves, removed some coltsfoot. Learning: I don't recognize some of the new plants -- I will try and identify them, but as of now they remain a mystery! One of them LOOKS like coltsfoot but it is not because it is not connected in the middle (has leaflets instead of one big leaf?), and it is far, far away from where the coltsfoot grows. It is by the fringecup sign, but it is not fringecup. Also something is growing in that same area that I think might be fringecup!
Cumulative hours: 2 hrs (24 total)
Week eight
Date: March 3 Time: 4 hrs Activities: Worked on presentation and creating web page, signage, and "book chapter" material Learning: Michelle, Anastarr and I are a great group and I am so glad Marja put us together. We get along great and have fun while getting our work done.
Cumulative hours: 4 hrs (28 total)
Week nine
Date: March 8 Time: 6 hrs Activities: Worked on presentation. Developed and rehearsed ceremony, compiled and refined information accumulated throughout quarter. Learning: The presentation including ceremony, the signage, the "book chapter" pages, and web page info is all done for this quarter!
Date: March 10 Time: 3 hrs Activities: Transplanted nootka rose to open streambank area. Planted 2 osoberry, 3 wild oregon grape, 1 red osier dogwood. Learning: We had not planned on planting another red-osier dogwood in our site, but it was bought from the plant sale and a few were not being used so we planted one on the gravel hill next to the other red-osier dogwood. The sign said it was good for erosion control so this made sense. It was nice to finally have something on that little hill where there is normally only horsetail! That little red-osier dogwood answered my prayer of needing a plant for there. Also we noticed that we already had osoberry in our site -- I didn't know it was already there until its little green leaves started coming out! Transplanting some of the nootka rose felt really good, it was a great feeling to see that being done. I wish we had more time, people, and shovels so more could have been done. We will need to really cut back the remaining nootka rose SOON and I am thinking about doing that over break before it gets too late to do so. It will make me so happy if the nootka rose is happy in its new home! (I hope all the little plants we planted are doing okay...) I could not believe how incredible the compost we were using was! It was as if it was the richest soil in the world. We put it in the holes we dug when transplanting and I think the plants will be really happy with that on their roots. It was also really nice to actually do the transplanting since I have been reading about it and preparing for it for months. Because the nootka rose roots are so long sideways, we found it was useful to dig a trench and place many nootka rose plants in a line; this seemed to be the most efficient way. It was soooo great this morning, having all my classmates out in the light spring rain and working together on the garden; our knees were muddy and our hair was wet and I thought we all looked beautiful. There is an energy in the LHG that I feel nowhere else when we all get together and pay attention to it collectively. It is magical and I feel so blessed to be a part of it.
Cumulative hours: 9 hrs (37 total)
TOTAL QUARTER HOURS: 37 hrs
Fall Quarter
Week two
Date: Oct. 6 Time: 1 hr 30 mins Activities: met with natalie and worked on site description, identified main trees in site Learning: identified the following: red alder, western redcedar, big-leaf maple, red osier dogwood
Date: Oct. 9 Time: 3 hrs Activities: met with natalie and worked on site description, identified plants, discussed goals, wrote down what we need to research and planned future activities, made note of areas to be pruned, weeded path a little Learning: identified: nipplewort, common horsetail, sword fern, lady fern, trailing blackberry, salal, nootka rose, snowberry, purple-leaved willowherb (??). also learned that plant identification takes patience and can be frustrating!
Date: Oct. 9 Time: 1 hr Activities: researched plants identified today at site and also looked for additional pictures for plants we had a questionable identification on. Learning: nipplewort is an invasive species in the U.S. and common horsetail is considered a weed since it grows so aggressively. in the UK there is a superstition that blackberries should not be picked after sept. 15 because they are the devil's after that day. after looking at more pictures, i am pretty sure that the purple-leaved willowherb is not that. i am still stumped on that one. the bark of red alder was used by native americans to dye their fishing nets so they were less visible underwater.
Cumulative hours: 5 hrs 30 mins
Week three
Date: Oct. 16 Time: 3 hrs Activities: did some serious site work along the paved path. weeded herb robert, nipplewort, dandelions, trailing blackberry. cleaned up some ferns. Learning: thorns poke through my gloves and hurt! also i have NO idea how to turn on the hose at the longhouse. more importantly, at first i didn't think we would want to bring any plants into our site, but now we are seeing some places where there is a possiblity for putting something cool. mostly we want to put something at the corner since that is what you first see when you are walking down the path. a cool rock thing or a cool plant, we haven't decided.
Date: Oct. 17 Time: 1 hr Activities: researched the plants i was working with yesterday, herb robert mostly. Learning: herb robert is a powerful healing herb. it has cleared up various forms of cancer and is really good for your immune system. it also helps with pain and when rubbed on the skin will repel mosquitoes. next time we go to our site i will definitely get some of this and we will make sure a little is kept in one spot since this is such a valuable herb.
Cumulative hours: 4 hrs
Week four
Date: Oct. 19 Time: 1 hr Activities: did some more plant identification at site. pruned nootka rose along the paved path in between the two trail entrances. pulled up coltsfoot and trimmed trailing blackberry on the inner curve of the path under the salmonberry. Learning: identified salmonberry, bracken fern. the root system of the coltsfoot is really interesting.
Date: Oct. 22 Time: 4 hrs Activities: met with my Gifts Garden group up at Skokomish. we discussed many things, shared our feelings on the garden and what we envision for our work there this quarter. worked heavily on the culinary bed, cleared the path all around this area, weeded culinary bed some. Learning: learned the following plants: yellowdock, burdock. took home some yellowdock root so that will include learning of root preparation for the vinegar-making workshop.
Cumulative hours: 5 hrs
Week five
Date: Time: 3 hrs
Activities: went up to Skokomish with my garden group. defined the edge of the prairie section for most of the morning (weeding around/in between rocks at path's edge)
Learning: we need to pull up the alders, there are 3 so far we have pointed out as needing to come down. i definitely don't want to pull them without transplanting them, alix mentioned maybe she could put them in her backyard. the first frost was beautiful and we are getting a lot accomplished in the garden, it is looking so much better already and it feels good.
Cumulative hours: 3 hrs
Week six
Cumulative hours: 0 hrs
Week seven
Date: Nov. 9 Time: 2 hrs Activities: met with Natalie at LHG site. took pictures, observed our site's plants, discussed our presentation ideas. Learning: when looking at our nootka rose I saw a bright red fruit sticking up. i remembered having seen this fruit over in mixed forest B but thought it belonged to the hairy manzanita. it turns out it was the nootka rose hip. why were there not more fruits? when do the fruits grow? are they edible? also the red osier dogwood in mixed forest B has incredible clusters of blue berries. the red osier dogwood in mixed forest C has hardly any berries. what is the difference between these two dogwoods? does the amount of sunlight affect fruit abundance? an hour of observation brought up many questions. i can easily see the changes in our site's plants as they are preparing for the winter (little bright green buds on the salmonberry and little bright pink buds on the wild rose)
Date: Nov. 9 Time: 1 hr 30 mins Activities: researched primary plants of our site (nootka rose, red alder, salmonberry, red osier dogwood, ) and attempted to answer some of my questions from site observation earlier in the day. Learning: i am blown away by the usefulness of EVERYTHING. red osier dogwood bark can be made into rope.
Date: Nov. 10 Time: 1 hr Activities: researched our habitat (mixed forest of the pacific northwest)
Cumulative hours:4 hrs 30 mins
Week eight
Date:Nov. 16Time: 4 hrs Activities: went to LHG site and pulled up a LOT of coltsfoot
Date: Nov. 17Time: 3 hrs Activities: worked on presentation with Natalie
Date:Nov. 17 Time:1 hr Activities:researched potential plants for transplanting into our site
Cumulative hours: 8 hrs
Over Winter Break
Date: Dec. 31 Time: 2 hrs Activities: worked at LHG site, weeded horsetail, pruned trailing wild blackberry
Date: Jan. 2 Time: 2 hrs Activities: weeded more horsetail in addition to removing various weeds
Date: Jan. 4 Time: 1 hr Activities: researched how to transplant shrubs for moving nootka rose Learning: the information i found on how to dig up a shrub for transplanting can also be utilized in removing the red alders at the gifts garden!
