June 30: Work Day Report

For all intents and purposes, we're done with the installation! Huzzah! Thanks to all the volunteers who came out to help over the three work days. We had great support from Surfrider members, neighbors in the Capitol Riverfront, and of course friends of the Stempers. What a tremendous accomplishment!

Last night a dozen volunteers finished the walkways and tidied up the rocks, while soaking up a beautiful summer evening. The grass is coming in nicely around the trees, and the trees are doing well.

Sometime next week, Justin and I will put down the seed for the swales, cover the remaining bits of filter fabric, and move the rest of the gravel off to the side. (We'll need it over the course of the summer, to fill in thin spots.)

Thanks to Jessica Gould from WAMU for stopping by last night, too. Hopefully you'll hear a story about our project on the radio in the near future.

Here's a photo of the site last fall, before work started:

And here's what it looks like now:

Great work, everyone! Now, we just need some visitors.

Barbara Ball, of College Park's REI store, takes it all in.

They're Alive! Tree Update

I mentioned the other day that five of the trees were looking sad, but we had faith that four would bounce back from the dry weather we've been having. Good news! All five have new growth!

Two of the birches have multiple green leaves at the top, as you can sort of see in this photo.

The third, the tree we thought might be dead, has tiny buds and a few new branches coming in.

The two maples that were pretty dried out have new branches too. We're very excited to see that we can in fact grow trees in a gravel lot, during a drought.