CLIP Week 7: Working around the Weather
On Monday, Anthony and I (Jazzy) came back from our vacations and joined Denver, Grace and Hannah to help out with planting native plants with Small Waters 
Education. It was a two-day process of working with around 60 kids, teaching them how to efficiently cultivate native plants. Each intern worked with five kids, and while some kids were more interested than others, the few that expressed their excitement kept the environment positive. This was an all-day program where the first half of the day started with helping Judy and Jack set up the area, while the afternoon consisted of engaging with the kids.
Tuesday morning started with a workshop with Lisa Haderlein, TLC’s executive director, where we learned about the history of TLC, how and why it was formed, what it means to be a community-based land trust, and how she came to be the executive director. It was a very informative chat, and we learned a lot about different organizations and their purposes, and how we come to play in that aspect, too!
After our chat, the afternoon was essentially a continuation of Monday. We spent time with the camp kids again and taught even more kids how to plant! It was a nice experience to work with the educational aspect of the job and actually be the leaders who ensure everything is planted properly while everyone is also having fun.
Wednesday began with our (excluding Denver) first visit to Crowley Woods in Harvard for a workday of clearing brush. It got increasingly hotter as time went on, so the workday ended up being cut a little short. However, before we left, we got to have a mini celebration for Co-Site Steward Julie’s birthday (happy birthday Julie!) After the workday ended, we helped Kevin and Denver monitor bumblebees at Crowley and Irish Oaks respectively. At Irish we figured out very quickly that the “real feel temperature” for the day had reached 103 degrees, so we decided on a quick 45min – 1hr of getting rid of parsnip via brush saw or parsnip predator before heading back to Hennen to wrap up the day.
Thursday consisted of on-and-off showers, which was difficult to work around, so it was a more chaotic day traveling between different sites. The four of us (Daniel, Anthony, Denver and I) started the morning off at Irish Oaks brush sawin. The conditions weren’t looking too great, but we got as much as we could cover, and focused on mowing down parsnips. Eventually the rain got to us and working with motorized machinery in pouring rain didn’t seem like the smartest idea. We headed over to Jankowski and drove through the entire area, taking note of sweet clover. The rain finally decided to die down, so it made sense to go to Crowley to walk around and practice our plant identification skills. It was nearing 3:00, so we finished off the day by going over our FQA (Floristic Quality Assessment) project.
Friday consisted of a whole lot of brush sawing and bumblebee monitoring. We began the day at Apple Creek brush sawing white sweet clover until Jazzy and I (Anthony) split off around noon to do bumblebee monitoring. We started at Boloria at Jazzy’s site, and we got to see a ton of bumblebees. We took as many identifying pictures as we could, but we were having a real crisis with our phones overheating in the overbearing sunlight. We then helped Dennis out at Boloria with some sedge seed collection for about an hour before heading back to Hennen for my own bumblebee monitoring. My monitoring was much less successful with only two bumblebees and about 600 million mosquitos, but we still had fun nonetheless!
