It's Summertime

Hey PKP Restoration fanatics! Apologies for the sleepiness on the blog of late-I've been relishing in the summer atmosphere.

Since I last dropped in back in April, we have met for one workday in both May and June. Here's how they went down:

May 5th

Nine tough PKP restorationists elected to kick their Cinco de Mayo celebrations off with a little English Ivy ass-whoopin. It was a fantastic way to celebrate, and we dropped the hammer down on the swamp bridge area, focusing on English Ivy and some straggling woody exotics where we've made a ton of progress. It was a great concerted effort with excellent camaraderie and some good wildlife sightings. Check it out:

June 1st

On the first day of June, three faithful PKP warriors returned to eradicate more English Ivy at the swamp bridge area. We've kept at this spot pretty hard, and the results are becoming quite apparent. It was a nice summer morning, and we had some nice learning opportunities to appreciate the native plants that are thriving in our treatment areas and the extremely active Red Fox den near our work area.

//Other PKP News\\

I'm going to conclude this post with a bit of bad news and a bit of good news. On Friday, June 28th I was horrified to see that all but one of our planted Shortleaf Pines in the entrance area to the Park had been destroyed. The destruction was apparently deliberate, with uprooted or cut saplings strewn across the lawn. No disturbance to the protective stakes was visible, so it appears that someone intentionally sought out to remove these trees. This is a very sad event considering the massive volunteer effort and restoration funds that went into this planting project 😔😔😔

And to conclude on a good note, our Big Day team launched on April 27th to try and see 200 bird species in Georgia in 24 hours and to raise money for our initiative. Well fell short of our species goal and landed 183 (see https://ebird.org/tripreport/225843), but we raised $2699 for our cause between GoFundMe and direct donations! Sounds like we're getting some more native plants!!!

I hope to see y'all in July. My schedule is a bit hectic this month, so I will keep everyone updated on when we can get together!

Viva la Parque de Pendleton!!