CLIP Week 4: Team Building and Community
On Monday, we ventured to TLC’s Concannon conservation easement with Randy Schietzelt, TLC board member, to do some monitoring.
We wrote down all of the flora and fauna we saw (which was a lot) and Randy identified a lot of them for us (because he’s amazing and cool). Afterward, we went to Culver’s to enter our data and do a Floristic Quality Index (FQI). We found that there was an overall increase in Concannon’s score (yay!). Once we were finished, we got ice cream and headed to the home improvement store to pick up materials for our research project. Using PVC pipes, we built a 1 meter by 1 meter quadrat and practiced the methodology we will use for our research project. We prepared our data log and journaled to finish out the day.
On Tuesday, we went to Ryder’s Woods with TLC’s Kevin and Laura. For the first hour, we found a good spot to pick garlic mustard and dame’s rocket while we waited for people to arrive for the Tree and Shrub Identification class that Kevin was leading. When everyone arrived, we walked around Ryder’s again to look at all of the common species of trees and shrubs in the area, taking note of the leaf shape, the bark texture and patterns, and other ways to identify these plants. After the tour, we went back to hand-pulling garlic mustard and dame’s rocket while picking black raspberries to snack on.
Wednesday came with inclement weather, forcing us inside for most of the day. We began by learning how to do chainsaw maintenance (minimal bloodshed). Afterward, we learned about the magic of staff meetings, and I (Denver) went on iNaturalist to identify honeysuckle because I believe it is important to know one’s enemy. With a quick break in the rain, we worked on cleaning up the garden in front of Hennen again before lunch.
As a team bonding experience, we worked together to build a cabinet for the TLC office and
accomplished our task in about three hours, and also with minimal bloodshed. I was a little worried that the pressure of building this cabinet might be too much for our still-new team bonds to withstand, but we survived and came out stronger than ever. For the last half an hour, we worked together on a data entry task, which will be wonderful to add to our resumes.
On Thursday we paid a visit to Small Waters Education to learn about food forests and the conservation practices that they do to manage their property in a way that promotes ecological stability! At lunch, we got to try Chokecherries and Pawpaws for the first time, and while the Chokecherries were very tart, they were balanced out by the sweet Pawpaw. We hung out with a couple cats and learned how to plant for our future pollinator garden planting event. It was super educational and a great time, and Judy and Jack were a delight to be around for the day!
We had Friday off this week! On Saturday, we got the chance to tree climb like arborists at a huge bur oak in Wisconsin! We had a great time climbing on different ropes, seeing the sights, and trying to get as high into the tree as possible. Afterward, we went to a really lovely restaurant where I (Denver) had a really good pizza that burned the roof of my mouth so badly it hurt for a couple days afterward, but was so worth it. We had a great time bonding in the car on the ride to and from the site. Overall, it was a really fun day!
The major theme of this week was team building and tapping into a sense of community!
Tick Count: 1
Cumulative Tick Count: 16
Words of Wisdom from Spock: vfyf zxrery cvy ,