Day 896: Canadaway Creek clean up

Alberto Rey, John Straight and a few friends run a fly fishing club in the Fredonia Middle School that teaches kids how to fish.  In winter they make flies, then in the spring there are excursions and events to put their new skills into practice.  It's a wonderful way for families to bond over shared experiences of creating colorful lures and catching elusive fish.  I'm for most any activity that brings families together and gets kids outside.

For the past eleven years, they've also been organizing a clean-up of Canadaway Creek.  This year we were free and decided to join in.  John Titus from the college spoke briefly about invasive species in our area.  They had divided the creek into eight segments and teams were assigned to each section.  Another group was designated to plant seedlings along the edge of the creek to prevent erosion.  That's the group we joined.

A landowner in Shumla hoped that planting trees would hold the bank along the creek and prevent further loss of his property. When we spoke with him, he said erosion had already taken an entire potato field.

Unfortunately, the pathway to the creek bed was thick with poison ivy.  I wasn't willing to risk it with my sensitivity and the parents of several kids also were wary.  We moved to another site in Burnham's Hollow instead.

There were lots of people and little space so Steve and I left to do our own invasive species pull: the garlic mustard in our own woods.  We filled a large garbage bag of seed laden plants.  Our timing was excellent.  If we had waited a few days, all those seeds would have been scattered.  We were also horrified to discover that the northwest corner of the woods is overrun with poison ivy.  It's growing up two of Roger's pine trees and several of ours.  It will be too dangerous to mow because the oils would be sprayed around and caught on the lawnmower.  We'll have to research to figure out how to handle the spread.

A beautiful, but injured, luna moth