Duwamish Cleanup

I was dismayed to realize it’s been over three months since I’ve posted here. Time!! It had also been awhile since I’d worked in a park, but I corrected that March 1 at the Georgetown Riverview Restoration Project at the Duwamish River/Gateway Park North. It was a cold and cloudy day, so the pictures aren’t very good, but luckily, the rain held off until we’d accomplished our goals for the day.

Gateway was a new park for me. I mostly only go through Georgetown to get on I-5, though I have explored the community a little during the summer Georgetown Arts and Garden Tour. Held every July, the tour is now in its twelve year. The neighborhood sports an eclectic mix of artists and industry and is fun to walk through and gape at the odd assortment of items people consider art and the beautiful and the weird gardens.

Georgetown has an interesting history with a claim to being Seattle’s oldest neighborhood. The Duwamish were the first recorded inhabitants. They called their community Tu-kweltid-tid, by the riverbank. Europeans arrived in 1850, and in 1871, Annie and Julius Horton platted their land into a town, naming it after their son George in honor of his graduation from medical school.

The Duwamish River played an important role in the development of Georgetown. The city’s skewed street layout is based on the river’s original path. Regular flooding created fertile soil, and the river valley provided a rich habitat for salmon, trout, clams, oysters and waterfowl. Farmers sold their produce at Pike Place Market. Hops grew particularly well, and in 1883 the Seattle Malting and Brewing Company opened and grew to become the sixth largest brewery in the world. Seattle residents boated down the river to visit waterfront beer gardens. But in the usual way of human history, government leaders couldn’t leave a good thing alone, and in the name of encouraging industry by providing cheap, accessible factory sites, ten of the sixteen bends in the Duwamish were removed by 1917, rerouting the river nearly a mile away from Georgetown. Industry flourished, and the Duwamish is now an ecological catastrophe and a Federal Superfund Cleanup site.

Currently, Gateway Park North, at the end of 8th Avenue South, is the only public access point to the Duwamish River in Georgetown. I learned about the cleanup and restoration project through a Washington Native Plant Society e-mail notice. As a Native Plant Steward, I watch for nearby work opportunities and was delighted to play a part in adding native plants to this tiny pocket park. Earth Day, Saturday, April 19, is the next scheduled work party from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Duwamish Alive! is sponsoring this event, which will include eight work sites along the river and an Earth Day Festival at the Cooper School near Pigeon Point Park from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. with free food, performances, giveaways, etc. It will be a great way to spend a Saturday. Pick a spot closest to you along the river, and come join us!

Volunteer

I’ve taken part in three plant/land events this last week. The photo is of me wearing my White Center Spring Clean tee-shirt and Trust for Public Land hat.

Friday, May 11, I worked for the Washington Native Plant Society to prepare for the spring native plant sale at the Bellevue Botanical Garden on Saturday, May 12. Tuesday, I attended the 12th Annual Conservation Awards Breakfast sponsored by the Cascade Land Conservancy, and this weekend I volunteered at the 4th Annual White Center Spring Clean, organized by the White Center Community Development Association.

I’m always glad to see the labels at the WNPS sales. The sales, held in the spring and the fall, raise money for Plant Society activities such as native restorations and educational outreach. But the labels, tidily affixed to a pot containing only one native species, provide a much-needed refresher course in plant identification for me, so much easier than trying to pick them out amongst the jumble of nature-gone-wild in the forest. It’s like any other skill, use it or lose it, and since my native plant stewardship training in 2001, I haven’t used it enough to remember all of Washington’s native plants.

Then I had breakfast with the governor (along with 1800 others). Gov. Christine Gregoire said she couldn’t bring all of the Land Conservancy supporters to Olympia, so she brought Olympia to the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle. There she signed the Transfer of Development Rights into law. Frankly, I don’t entirely understand the bill, must do more research. In addition to recognizing those who’ve contributed to the conservation of lands, the breakfast was a fundraiser. According to the thank you I received in the mail the very day after the breakfast (how did they do that?), $653,705 were raised. That should help save a few trees.

At the Saturday White Center Spring Clean Up, I grubbed Himalayan blackberries Rubus discolor at Lakewood Park. If you’re not from the Pacific Northwest, you probably don’t know that this species of blackberry is extremely invasive. The Washington native trailing blackberry Rubus ursinus looks quite a bit like the Himalayan variety. Ideally, you eradicate the invasive while leaving the native in place.

A large contingent of Seattle Pacific University students volunteered for the Clean Up. Working with them was a delight. One young woman I talked with was born in the Ukraine. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was only eight months old, but they continued to speak Ukrainian in her home, so she’s bilingual. This summer she’s going back for the first time. She’ll be working in an orphanage.

A group of young men made the time-consuming, hard physical labor of digging up blackberry roots pass more quickly by inventing stories. One student would start a fantasy, and the next one would pick it up and elaborate. Since I’m a writer (you can read about my work at www.linda-wallace.com), I was thrilled at their choice of entertainment. The stories were pretty good, too.

When the Spring Clean was over, I returned home tired, with scratched wrists (must remember to wear my gauntlet gloves next time) but content. Volunteering. It makes me happy.