On Tuesday morning we woke up to sunny skies, but cool weather. We did not have to be at our site until 10am and needed to be out of the church by 8am, so we all went down to my apartment and I made pancakes for everyone. Also convenient, the site for the day was just above my apartment. After our stomachs were full we headed up to our site for the day, via many flights of steps and uphill about 500 feet, to the College Street Ravine in West Seattle.

For the day we worked with Nature Consortium. Nature Consortium is a grassroots, community-based organization whose mission is to connect people, arts and nature. They produce an EcoARTs Program, an Urban Forest Restoration Program and the Arts in Nature Festival. The PVs worked with their Urban Forest Restoration Program at the Duwamish Head Park alongside volunteers from the EPA. Our task as a group was to bring in 5 gallon buckets of mulch down the trail about 1/4 mile to cover an area where another group had pulled invasive English Ivy to keep it from reappearing. We formed a line and had quite the bucket passing process to get it all down the trail. By lunchtime we were done with the mulch project, so after a break we were tasked with continuing to take out invasive ivy further down the trail. Staying true to their mission of connecting people, arts and nature, a local banjo player (and his dog) was brought in to serenade us as we pulled ivy. Not only did we get a lot of work done during the day, we learned a lot about the natural ecosystem in the northwest.

Tuesday we also did quite a bit of site seeing and enjoying the local area. The PVs took a water taxi across Elliott Bay to downtown Seattle and walked around on the waterfront. After arriving back in West Seattle we had a beach fire down on Alki Beach in West Seattle, roasting hot dogs and s’mores over the fire. We were joined for the evening by a few family and friends, making it a fabulous day.

(We are still having problems uploading new pictures. We will share once the problem is solved.)