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.