By Natasha Kacoroski

Well folks, it’s sunscreen season. The first Saturday in June started out overcast, but the clouds quickly burned off, and, judging from the lobster hue of my skin, the sun was strong. I encourage everyone to avoid making my mistake and glop on the sunblock. Sunburn aside, it was a brilliant day doing habitat restoration at Marymoor Park.

We had special guests this month. The enthusiastic and totally awesome Cub Scouts Pack 425 joined us to build fantastic mulch “doughnuts” around native plants. It was a lot of fun working with them. They have great teamwork skills and ask fantastic questions, including “What is mulch made out of?” and “Is this an invasive species?”

Between Cub Scout Pack 425 and all our other wonderful volunteers we accomplished a lot. We finished mulching Snag Row (the forested area between Parking Lot G and the grass playfields) and made a huge dent in the remaining mulch piles along the dog park fence and the alder grove. In total we had 41 volunteers who worked 110.5 hours. We moved approximately 12 cubic yards of mulch to spread around 900 trees.

I’d like to conclude with a quick check-in on how the plants we put in last winter are doing, since it’s been six months and is now the growing season. The plants in Snag Row appear to be doing quite well. The plants along the living fence are doing okay. Further from the parking lot, some die-off is present. The alder grove, however, seems to have been hit hard and only a few of those planted are producing leaves. I have several hypotheses for why this might be – soil condition, heat stress, etc. – and will continue to monitor closely. If anyone reading this has any insights or suggestions, please email marymoor@eastsideaudubon.org. That’s it for now!