June 26, 2026
Hello everyone! We hope everyone was glad to see a bit of rain this week. With the rainy weather, we were able to focus on the educational side for some of our newer staff, leaning more on the identification for our invasive species within our watersheds. The rain made for a few colder adventures for us but overall, we have a great week to share with you all!
Starting Monday, we checked up on our friends the tree swallows to keep up to date with their nesting boxes. From our tree planting in Victoria, we had a few extra willows we were able to squeeze in near the banks where we hope they will root down and help keep the bank stabilized. Throughout the week, we also worked on building brushmats using cedar brush along the west branch of westmoreland stream, where there seems to be lots of silt build up. On Tuesday we started prepping for our art in the park event at Linden Park by fixing up our sign and one of the benches that has been out of order. Before the rain began, we trimmed up the Tryon Trail a bit to slowly get it ready to open it up to the public. Once we got back inside and dried off, we worked on some data entry from our previous surveys, as well as canvassing for funders for our annual SSWA Swim event in August. This was also our time to help teach our staff some more identification features on our invasive species and other common plants we see every day on our surveys. Knowing how they flower, their leaf shape, and stem type helps us to eradicate them more efficiently!
We also teamed up with the Department of Transportation on Wednesday to show them our process in our natural based solution to prevent cliff erosion, where we planted more wild roses, as they are very salt tolerant and have a strong root system to help keep the cliff stabilized in an area where the roses will thrive. While we planted some shrubs, our coastal team went to deal with some of our invasive green crabs once again to survey their population habits and further understand their patterns. Thursday we created three brushmats using balsam fir in maple plains to aid in sediment trapping and bank erosion, and later in the evening, the crew worked on pulling out bittersweet nightshade in Balaklava East, another one of our invasive species where they thrive by rooting directly into the stream. And finally, to finish the week off, we finished up our brushmats in Maple Plains while others went banding swallows for the morning. In the afternoon we all got together to enjoy our art in the park event at Linden Park, where we had lawn games, snacks, and enjoyed a special art tutorial from Dina on plant prints.
Next week we'll dive into stream restoration, clearing blockages to help stream flow! We hope everyone enjoys their rainy weekend!
Love, SSWA
