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[OT from cottage renovations]
Saturday was a fine morning for the annual arbor day observance. a spring cleanup was scheduled for the McCathran Hall and Woman's Club grounds: the word was gotten out, supplies and refreshments were laid on. with arrangements so well covered, what could go wrong? only one thing: the attendance was, to put it kindly, sparse. as in very sparse. it seems the outreach efforts may not have reached as many people as intended, and an unfortunate cross scheduling against two other events meant that most of the expected volunteers were not able to show up.
the immediate practical consequence was a scaling back of plans to fit the resources actually available; with any luck a second pass can be arranged for some time over the next few weekends. one should also bear in mind that the Grove's groundskeeping can be (actually, it certainly is) a sink capable of absorbing unlimited time and energy from those who any to spare. and though less might have been achieved than had been hoped, the day's beautiful aspects were completely undiminished.
(click through this thumbnail for higher resolution image)
Howard Park
this flowering cherry, just one blossom on several trees laden with thousands, shows how good things were.
one gratifying aspect to note was the results of some effort I had put into cutting back and digging up honeysuckle and other invasive growth around the tree bases last year. because I had stopped before it was all done there was a control group showing what the rest of it would have looked like had the baseline persisted. that was encouraging and I'm hoping to get to more of it over the course of this year.
similarly, in the East Woods behind the road out back there were two massive infestations of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) last year. I had managed to get one of them pretty much cleared out but hadn't been able to get to the other one. the area cleared last year was only lightly infested whereas the other was as bad as ever. another objective for this season is that of being able to deal with both of them.
