FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
|
FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
|
|
|
PERKS OF TUSSLING WITH ITALIAN THISTLE By Jan Simpson My granddaughter Cammy Simpson is a freshman at Carlmont High School in Belmont. This spring she took a biology class and needed 15 hours of environmental volunteering at Edgewood Park. Since she had a conflict with the Saturday Carlmont weeding sessions, I had the pleasure of pulling Italian thistle with her in an area designated to us by Ken Himes. With gloves on, and a weeding tool for each of us, we were ready to begin! It was March and the soil was moist, and the Italian thistle was petite. A few deer amidst bush lupine watched us, as did four others across the trail and up the hill. The day was delightful, and after three hours our bags were full, and we felt competent! We decided to cross the Edgewood Trail, and there Cammy discovered a gigantic thistle, attacking it with vigor and determination.
During the following weeks, we watched the thistles grow and multiply. Wherever we looked, there was a thistle, many wearing rose-colored blooms, and certainly thornier than the week before. Each week our bags got heavier. The deer were in the area, there one moment and gone the next time we looked up. There were unexpected perks to this job. Cammy found reddish wee bugs on the small thistle. Weeks later, the bugs were larger, brownish red, and spittle covered the larger thistles. Mystery solved: they were spittle bugs! One day a good-sized alligator lizard perched on Cammy’s weeding tool and let me take a picture, then left us quickly. Another Wednesday, as we walked to our area, we saw a bluebird, heard a meadowlark, and watched a grosbeak. Besides the birds, the flowering grasslands were breathtakingly beautiful! The last week we weeded, we headed toward a barren area where the Italian thistle likes to sprout, but instead, coiled up, wearing black and white striped bands, was a marvelous well-fed adult king snake. What a name for such a strikingly handsome, harmless (to us) snake! Some of the hikers and runners would see us, and thank us for weeding, which was very nice. This experience made me appreciate the dedicated weeders who go out twice weekly. This was a great way to enjoy Edgewood with my granddaughter, who each spring, since she was four, has walked the trails of Edgewood with me, searching for fairy lanterns (also known as globe lilies). As we walked down the trail, having completed the required 15 hours, we saw countless fresh pale pink fairy lanterns. Now that was another unexpected bonus!
Cammy’s Thoughts on her Experience This experience was both fun, and helpful to the environment. Being the daughter of an environmental scientist, I for one loved Edgewood Park and would hate to see it taken over by weeds like Italian thistle. One of the days while we were pulling the thistle, a man asked us what we were doing. My grandma told him, and he actually said thank you to us, which I thought was very nice. That feeling of making other people happy is too hard to describe, but it felt great! |
|
