Friday, August 10, 2012

Conservation Corps Update, August 7th-10th

Post contributed by Conservation Corps Youth Outdoors Crew 2:

Tuesday, August 7th
The Conservation Corps crew is glad to be back to work for St. Paul after spending the majority of the summer leading Summer Youth Outdoors crews. We started the week by installing posts for fencing along an area of newly planted shoreline at Como Lake. We also removed old fencing at the Victoria rain garden. Finally, we spent some time in the Como Woodland Outdoor Classroom (CWOC) removing buckthorn.
Wednesday, August 8th
Wednesday began with finishing the fencing project along Como Lakeshore. We then removed the seed heads of burdock in CWOC. We have been working diligently to keep this pesky invasive species out of the park and have noticed that our efforts have been helping.
Katie showing the burdock seed heads that we removed
Thursday, August 9th
On Thursday, we visited the rain gardens in the Como neighborhood and did maintenance on them. We removed some invasive plants and thinned out other crowded plants. The gardens are looking very nice and functioning well to filter storm water after rain events rather than allowing it to run right into the storm drains and flow, unfiltered, into local bodies of water. Beautiful and great for the environment!

Friday, August 10th
To conclude the week, we worked at CWOC again removing buckthorn and clearing an area of all plant life in preparation for the beginning of a new project.