Caring for the creek

| Environment | West Seattle parks | Westwood

Catching up from the weekend, we have another work-party report from one of West Seattle’s treasured greenspaces: Lina Rose from EarthCorps says 10 volunteers joined her and forest steward Kirsten Rohrbach to clear almost 1000 square feet of invasive weeds from the Thistle Street Greenspace along Longfellow Creek, including clearing space around young cedar trees planted along the creek trail. Lina sent photos; first one shows what it looked like before they dug in:

Next, volunteers in the middle of their work:

No “after” photo – you’ll just have to go see for yourself (Thistle Street Greenspace is one of those places we’ll admit is on our “haven’t been there but must go soon” list; it’s easy to find, just off Thistle east of Chief Sealth HS). Next work party there is September 22nd; other Longfellow Creek sites have monthly work parties, listed here (and also always included in our weekly West Seattle Weekend Lineup posted every Friday morning).

WendyHJ August 28, 2007 (12:25 pm)

When I completed my Native Plant Steward training with the Washington Native Plant Society (www.wnps.org), I chose the Thistle Street greenspace as my project, a one year stewardship commitment of 100 hours in exchange for my training. Some trees had been planted by a class or scout troop in 1999 and they were dying from suffocation under ivy and blackberries. I organized work parties there – one for Windermere Community Service Day (I used to be an agent there), and also brought in a bunch of hard-working WaMu volunteers for United Way’s Day of Caring. I used to live in an apartment on 25th Ave SW. I also was the first crusader for the p-patch there, which I fondly called “CreekPatch”. I’ve just now completed 3 years of service on the Board of Directors of P-Patch Trust and was very happy to see the garden completed. I bought a house near Puget Ridge and moved and the community garden effort was luckily taken on by nearby homeowoners adjacent to the space. I sometimes stop and take my dog for a walk there – I used to be with the Westwood Neighbordhood Council when I lived in that ‘hood and helped with the early design process for the Longfellow Legacy Creek Trail – which is such a great asset to our community. Thistle Street greenspace is too short of a walk for me, and so I walk longer parts of the trail, or now that I am settling into my townhouse in High Point, I walk around the pond and for blocks and blocks all around my new neighborhood. I am glad to see some effort is being put into this area again, before the work of others is completely obliterated by the nasty side of Ma Nature. Thanks for posting, and thank you to the volunteers for all their hard work, continuing the efforts of those that came before them.

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