GEC (Fiddleheads and Spotted Owls and BEC (Townsend Chipmunks, Pacific Chorus Frogs) Team Up at Connelly Creek

Lots of explorers today!

Today the Townsend Chipmunks and Pacific Chorus frogs met two Girls Explorers Club groups, the Fiddleheads and Spotted Owls, at our BEC service site at Connelly Creek in Happy Valley Park. This was an afternoon outing after a half day of school for most of us. We showed up with lots of energy that would be put to good use moving mulch and digging up blackberries! We even got a chance to use some of our Art of Carving skills to help install some cribbing down at the creek bank.

Checking out some cribbing

After three and a half years of service outings at Connelly Creek, our site is really starting to come together. We have eliminated the loins share of the blackberries and put down many yards of mulch in an attempt to choke out the invasive reed canary grass. Some of our native plants are in their second year of life and it is encouraging to see the fresh buds and leaves growing from their young branches. This season, most of our focus is on finishing up the removal of the last blackberries and continuing to mulch over reed canary grass.

Getting those blackberry roots out!

We have also been keeping a close eye on our native plants that we have planted in our cages (to protect them from deer and rabbits). With careful weeding in these, we continue to provide these plants their best shot at growing tall and helping to reestablish a patch of native forest along the bank of the stream.

One of our native plant cages. Installed by Explorers a couple of seasons ago.

A new task for us this season is installing cribbing on the creek bank. We have finally removed the last blackberries from the bank of the stream. This also means that these stream banks are mostly bare with few roots to hold them in place. In order to prevent erosion, we set up cribbing to hold the bank in place in the absence of plant roots. Eventually, our trees will be established enough to hold the bank up on their own, but until then we will use cribbing to our advantage!

Installing some cribbing

In addition to all of this work, the two boys groups and two girls groups moved a whole truck load of mulch! This is important as we try to get a jump on the rapid spring growth of reed canary grass.

Moving that mulch

At closing circle, as always, we had an opportunity to share what we were grateful for during our practice of our Attitude of Gratitude. The mentors were pleased and excited to hear a few boys express specific gratitude for getting to work with the girls groups. In the end, with four groups doing service, we got lots done today and provided a good foundation of work for the rest of the groups to build on during their service outings this season.

To see the rest of the photos from our day, click here.