Work at Cap Sauers

We had a very good worday at Cap Sauers last Saturday, with about 25 volunteers, some from Mother McCauly High School. We burned brushpiles and cut lots of honeysuckle. Burn season is underway with staff, contractors and volunteers working on the burns.

A Day at Little Red Schoolhouse

We had a great day at The Little Red Schoolhouse Art Fair yesterday. There was a pretty good crowd considering the weather. A big thanks to all of the Palos volunteers who came out to help set up, take down, and talk to the curious who came into our booth. We got quite a few new names for our Palos Weekly. We also passed out schedules and we left some in the new Education Center, and if you haven't seen that yet it is worth a trip to visit and spend some time enjoying and learning.

Palos Restoration Picnic

Here are a few pictures from our PRP picnic last Sunday Sept. 12, 2010. Diana was very pleased with the workday, covering two different areas. We also had two of our Fall interns attend and they worked hard chainsawing for a few hours. We all had time to relax after the workday with some food and conversation. Thanks to all who helped to setup, and cleanup, it made my day much easier.

Butterfly video trial

Mushroom at Hidden Pond

Here are two pictures of the same mushroom 6 hours apart. It were found on the
Hidden pond workday last Saturday. For those of you who don't like to pull garlic mustard
I beleive that the season is over. Some of what we pulled Saturday was ready to drop it's seed.
We do have tee shirts for our regular volunteers, so come out to a workday and get a couple.

Eagle Scout Project at Spears

We had a very good workday at Spears last weekend, thanks to all who were there to help. This was a Eagle Scout project for one young man and he organized it and recruited all the scouts, friends, family and leaders who were there. The scouts and our volunteers cleared out two large patchs of barberry and threw it on the burning brushpiles. It was one of our last cool days of the past week. The area we cleared was used as a example of what woods should not look like because across the trail is a example of what woodlands should look like. So once this is fully restored we will need a new area to use as a example.

We had a great workday last weekend at Pioneer Woods where we burned 17 brushpiles made by contractors a few months back. This is a new record for Palos and one I hope we don't break very soon. Brush pile burning is hard work and this is quite a accomplishment. Congrats to Joe, Diana and the crew that was out to help last weekend.

This past Sunday we had our Potluck dinner with a good turnout of about 45 people. We had a great selection of food which people really enjoyed. We had a couple of slideshows that people seemed to enjoy too. The new date seemed to work we had a great day. Hope to see you all next year.

Burn at Hidden Pond Prairie

Later the same day as the Paw Paw workday, Hidden Pond prairie was burned by FPD staff and volunteers. You can see by the pictures that it was a perfect burn with as much coverage as I could hope for. Someone said I was running the drip torch with a smile on my face. You can see in the last picture even the smoke was going up just like it should.

We had a great workday at Paw paw last weekend. burning brushpiles and adding to the piles. We had about twelve people show up for the workday. Thanks for all your help.

Thought I would try a little video on our blog and see how it works. This is from last weekend at Cap Sauers and we burned 12 piles
that contractors made this past fall and Winter from the brush they cut. This is one of our Winter activites.

Monk Parakeets

We now have a flock of twelve or more Monk Parakeets in our neighborhood. They are really chowing down at the bird feeders. They fly around in groups and are very noisy. I imagine that it won't be to long till we see their large stick nests in the preserves, since we are only 1/2 block from Hidden Pond. This one I'm sure is thinking what was my great great grandfather thinking flying up here from South America. They were first sighted in the Hyde Park area more then ten years ago.

Good turnouts last weekend

We had a good turnouts for both our workdays last weekend. We were suprised by a
call saying we couldn't burn either day because of a air quality alert. We moved a lot
of wood at Hidden Pond consoladating piles, preparing them to burn at some
future date. We had new people show up for both workdays. I think you can see
by the group picture that we are a good mix of gender and age. We all work very
well together,the experienced helping the new volunteers. At Black Partridge
John reported clearing brush between the parking lot and the creek.

Three crews work at Cap

Last Saturday afternoon at Cap Sauers was one of three workdays last weekend in Palos. We had three different crews working in different areas of Cap. Matt Mulvaney was doing his Eagle scout service project, and he brought out 25 or more troop members and friends who cut honeysuckle up on the Eskar Trail. Kathy had her chainsaw crew out and they were cutting buckthorn east of the entrance trail. Another group of 7 or 8 volunteers were burning brush piles west of the entrance trail. I think we burned 6 or 7 piles and threw more ground litter on the piles. Thanks to all who made this a very successful workday at Cap. I know Bob was very pleased. Thats Bob serving up tea and cookies at halftime in the last picture.

Creating Katydid Savana

The end of January we were at Katydid prairie creating a savana at the south end of the prairie. All oaks were left with ash, elm and black cherry being removed. This will be a interesting place to observe over the Spring and Summer growing season to see the effect of the increased light. One of the sawyers became creative and made a stool which Dennis used at break time. Trasforming areas like this makes for one of the most exciting workdays. But then each workday creates it's own small transformations, even clearing garlic mustard from around a fallen log creates a better place.

It has been a while since I posted, between the holidays and computer problems I have not been able to give the blog the time it needs. I hope to post more regularly in the future. The pictures are from the January workday at Hidden Pond, a historic day for the site. We had six chainsaws going and lots of other volunteers to haul and burn. We cleared the east end of the prairie and some on the north end too. Thanks to all who were out that day, it made a huge difference. The February workdays have been busy too and we will feature one on the next entry.