Healing Gardens

Week 2

This week I spent time in the LH garden getting reacquainted with my sight. I spent some time journaling there and silently took in what the open hillside had to say to me. I was able to really appreciate how much it had changed since I had last spent time there. I could also feel its pent up energy ready to explode in anticipation of Spring.

Total Hours 3

Week 3

I spent time this week discussing with my secondary groups what we hoped to get accomplished in our sites and and methods for getting these projects done. We also spent time trying to identify plants that may have been forgotten of perhaps mistakenly identified previously. This week I discovered how difficult it is to try to identify a plant when there are no leaves or flowers to help you.

Total Hours 7

Week 4

This week my partner and I spent about 3.5 hours in the computer lab researching and writing our new introduction for our site. We have also been feeling somewhat discouraged about misidentifying plants last quarter. We felt pretty confident about identifying one of the plants as Mock Orange through the use of our key but when I decided to take a small piece home to compare it to a Mock Orange plant at my parents’ house I could see that they matched very well except for the fact that our plants have seed pods hanging from them. I spent about 3 hours this week trying to figure out what this plant is through research and also through walks where I tried to compare it with others. I was unsuccessful and I think we may need Marja’s help on this one.

This week I became much more informed on what is important in making a Riparian area successful. Last quarter we focused more on being open hillside and did not delve too deeply into defining a Riparian area and I was quite surprised to discover how many factors were vital to its success.

Total Hours 13.5

Week 5

This week I weeded Buttercup and other weeds in my site for about 2 hours. My partner and I discussed transplanting a small vine maple out of our area and found that the people in Mixed Forest A would like to put it at the edge of their area. We also discussed putting more bark chips on our trail in some of the spots that are a little bare. On Monday, we walked the McLane Nature Trail. I thought that was fabulous. We witnessed unbelievable amounts of Licorice Fern and also spent time examining their example of a Riparian area. My main wish for visiting this area was to compare the plants in our area with what was on the trail and while I did not see every plant in our area it was definitely worth the time spent.

This week I learned through observation that Indian Plum is very close to being leafed out and it was such a nice surprise to see so much of it on the trail. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the Riparian area at McLane had a lot of the same plants that we have in our site.

Total Hours 18.5

Week 6

This week we were going to drive down to Raintree Nursery to buy some alpine strawberries for our site but decided to hold off when we saw the list of plants that could possibly go into our area. So instead I spent about an 1.5 hours weeding and doing some general clean up of the area and approximately 4 hours researching riparian areas further. What I gained from this week was a much greater understanding of the balance of the riparian area. The trees and brush of the buffer zone help shade the creek, keeping the temperature appropriate, which in turn helps keep the salmon and other fish-life abundant which helps feed the indigenous people. If any part of this ecosystem becomes disturbed then the balance is shifted and results in hurting the people and the animals who depend on this area for food and shelter.

Total Hours 24 

Week 7

This week I met up with Rebecca who recently joined our group. We discussed the different plants in our areas and which plants we could not identify. We also spent some time in the computer lab researching Riparian areas in our region and ways we could implement ideas from these other areas into ours. I also browsed through the notebook that she had for her sight and found it to be a quite useful tool.

            In addition, this week Alina, Tracy and I made soap from different plants in our areas. We used nettle, douglas fir and a little lemon essential oil for fragrance. I thought nettle would be nice because of its healing properties associated with skin. The soap will take about a week to dry and then possibly we can bring them in to show the class.

            What I feel I got out of this week’s work were mostly great ideas from Rebecca;s notebook. Because I will not be returning next quarter I would really like to make the recordings of our progress as clear as possible so that next quarter’s group can just jump right in without having to a lot of research. The idea that I most want to implement is the use of a color-coded key to our site. This would entail drawing a map of our area and using colored numbers or letters to show where each plant is and then make a key to the map using coordinating colors to the letters or numbers.

Hours this week 6                                             Total Hours 30

Week 8

This week I spent about 6 hours working with my group on our presentation. I also spent about an hour and a half researching material to put into our signage page.

I was really quite surprised to see how many uses there are for douglas fir and red osier dogwood. My favorite bit of information I found out was that you could use red osier dogwood seeds for lighting.

Hours this week 7.5                                            Total Hours 37.5