Day 16: After roughly eight months of being on the injured list with a hip issue, I finally felt sufficiently recovered to join one of the Nisqually Land Trust's work parties. Oh, it felt good to be back on the end of a shovel again! We couldn't have asked for better soil in which to plant: friable, rockless, eminently easy to dig once you got through the sod of canary grass. Therein lies the problem. Canary grass is an invasive which takes hold in open areas and quickly proliferates. The best way to eliminate it is to shade it out. Admittedly, this solution takes years, but it is the most effective for the long term.
Forty-three volunteers (about half of them Cub Scouts) put 150 Douglas firs and shore pines in the ground in three hours. A few of us (the diehard core membership) stayed behind to install protective sleeves around each seedling. The white plastic tubes will prevent rodent damage, one of the major reasons for die-off among newly planted trees. They will be removed two or three years from now after the trees are fully established.
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