April 17th!

Our next urban ecostewards visit will be on April 17th.

We probably won't need a huge group of people on the 17th, given that there isn't a lot of Garlic Mustard and the knotweed is only just coming up. But please let Rebecca know if you are planning to come (the more people, the less work...) so that we have enough tools and gloves available. I'll send out a reminder later but in case I forget to state it, rubber boots are recommended...

Rebecca's E-mail

Rebeccareid@earthlink.net

Spring at our Ecostewards Site!

- it's getting very waterlogged already (probably why there is so little GM)
- the knotweed is just starting to show (red tips breaking through).

So that needs to be attended to, and, if anyone is thinking of cooking up a KNOTWEED PIE (come on, you know what you said...) then get ready because it will probably be pickable within the next week or two and you might want to get down there (I think Patty said the shoots should be no longer than 4" so that they're tender enough - sort of asparagus- y looking). Here's a good article on cooking KW:

http://www.culinate.com/articles/first_person/knotweed
- this is good: the Japanese honeysuckle overwintered in a lot of the park but I see no sign of it coming back yet on our site. It probably will eventually, but we clearly zapped it nicely last year.
It also looks like some of the plantings from last year are going to come up - yay! (the ones down at the bottom by the stream seem to be peeking through - I think they were monkey flowers). The ones in the marsh area are too waterlogged to tell right now.