This past weekend, my friend Deb was visiting. She makes her living as a naturalist, previously working in outdoor education. So when the question "what are we doing on Sunday?" came up, we decided to look for something to honor Earth Day a little early. The weather was going to be nice, and we wanted to be outdoors.
A Google search for Earth Day events in my area did not yield anything much. Then I had the idea to see what sort of programs my local metro park district was having. Bingo! One of the local parks was having a "Garlic Mustard Pull".
Garlic mustard is an invasive species. It crowds out the native wildflowers, and so the naturalist assigned to that park organized a group activity where volunteers could come and help pull out the plants by hand. This leaves room for the native species to return. There was a group of about 20 people, including one Boy Scout troop and one Girl Scout troop.
After spending about 90 minutes pulling the plants, the naturalist said we were done, so Deb and I continued on the trail and hiked for a total of 1.5 miles.
Here is Deb pulling some of the garlic mustard:
Here are some of the wildflowers we saw:
The trail followed along a creek. I sat at this spot for a little while to listed to the water moving over the rocks. It was very peaceful, but I couldn't stay too long. The ground was damp and my butt got wet.
Later, we saw this little guy and one of his friends. Just your garden variety garter snakes. I used to be terrified of snakes, but now for the most part they don't bother me. We didn't mess with these snakes at all, just watched them, but I'd have held him if we'd picked him up.
I am not a die-hard environmentalist or even a nature girl like Deb. But I do like being outdoors. I grew up camping, and I run in some of the other metroparks on a semi-regular basis. I am considering signing up as a parks volunteer, to help with events and programs like this. I have time to give, and this will get me outside and away from the computer. ;-)
8 comments:
Looks like you had a lot of fun :)
I'm rather jealous.
It was fun. Of course, Mom will laugh at me because I thought pulling weeds was fun. I always did hate it as a kid.
Happy Earth Day!
I'll have to do a search for Mustard Garlic to see what it looks like. I can pull a few in Michigan also.
want to go camping?
you're brave. snakes make me scream and run like peter on the cosby show.
sorry we missed you guys last weekend. We are home all this weekend :)
Okay, Kris - I googled a picture of the plant, and yes, I have it in my garden every year. It's been yanked out and killed every season. Going through google about this plant was interesting. I'll keep spreading the word to get rid of it!
Liz, once the naturalist showed it to me, I recognized it as well. I've seen it many times on camping trips, etc.
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