Thursday, March 12, 2015

Nature Park Cleanup, Sat. 3/21

The next scheduled cleanups are:
  • Mar 18 (Wed) (CANCELLED)
  • Mar 21 (Sat), 9 - noon
  • April 15 (Wed), 8:30 - 10:30 am
  • April 18 (Sat), 9 - noon
  • May 13 (Wed), 8:30 - 10:30 am
  • May 16 (Sat), 9 - noon
  • June 17 (Wed), 8:30 - 10:30 am
  • June 20 (Sat), 9 - noon
There are enough weeds to go around, so if you would like, pull a few whether it is an official cleanup or not. You can find pictures of many of the weeds at the following link. Tumble pigweed (Amaranthus albus) is not shown in the booklet. Click here for pictures of this noxious weed. If you are unsure, leave it be.

plandrawing_130728_600px.jpg
Map of park with areas labelled.

Volunteers should:
  • wear sunscreen, hat, sunglasses
  • bring water
  • bring gardening gloves and tools (weeders, trowels, whatever you use in your own garden)
  • wear comfortable work clothes, including work shoes (sneakers or boots) and long pants
  • bring binoculars for birdwatching (optional)
Children must be under adult supervision at all times. There is poison oak in the park that we will point out before starting.

The South Pas Nature Park is a four-acre habitat park along the Arroyo Seco. The entrance, marked by a small plaque on an attractive river rock wall, is in the 100 block of Pasadena Avenue in South Pasadena, east of the York Street Bridge. There is plenty of on-street parking on Pasadena Avenue.

The park is graced with mature coast live oaks, southern walnuts and western sycamores. Planted with sage, buckwheat and other native coastal sage scrub plants, the park provides an inviting environment for birds, lizards, squirrels and numerous other critters. Locals too enjoy walking, jogging and horseback riding through the park.

Coast Live Oak
Coast live oak

Since 2006 an informal group of park stewards, Friends of the Nature Park (FONP), have been removing invasive weeds and litter on Saturday and Wednesday mornings.  Cleanups are held approximately once a month. For notification of cleanup dates, contact Barbara Eisenstein (barbara.eisenstein@gmail.com), or check the Nature Park blog, (http://www.nativebydesign.blogspot.com).  

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Celebrate Arbor Day

I will be leading a walk in the nature park this Saturday (March 7, 2015) from 10 - 11 am in celebration of Arbor Day. Learn a bit about the history of the park and become acquainted with the beautiful native wildflowers, shrubs and trees. There have been an amazing number of monarch butterflies in the park, along with birds including red tailed hawks. I'm sure we will see some wonderful things as we enjoy our lovely native habitat park. Tell your friends! Hope to see you there!