1. Krysta, our Gardener-in-Residence, had a great first day planting salad last week
2. Last Monday, Crestwood students celebrated Earth Day at an all-school assembly with songs and rhymes and a tree-climbing demonstration by Joe House (click here to see a video from the 2014 Earth Day Assembly).
3. Third and fourth graders spent a very chilly Friday morning learning all about trees and forests for Arbor Day. Activities included tree identification, observations, sketching, planting ephemerals and pulling garlic mustard. I'd wager Crestwood students are some of the best garlic mustard eradicators in the city of Madison by this point.
4. The Love Sunday workday this past weekend was a success! Volunteers from Blackhawk church and the Crestwood community spent several hours spreading woodchips, digging up invasive weeds, clearing the orchard, digging up more invasive weeds, and cleaning up the garden plots for planting. Most of us were too busy digging and mulching to take pictures, alas!
5. Thanks to the work of retired art teacher Linda Gourley, we have hundreds of ephemerals to plant in the woods. Part of the woods restoration project is to clear the area of invasive weeds and replace them with native plants that belong there. Crestwood students pull bushels upon bushels of garlic mustard every year, but it spreads so quickly it's hard to stay ahead of it. Additionally, other invasive weeds (some native, most not) such as Dame's rocket, snow-on-the-mountain, Japanese knotweed, burdock and wood poppies are aggressively staking their claim in our woods. Some of these are difficult to get rid of, but we are working diligently. (Click on the links for each of those plants to learn more.) In the meantime, second grade classes are going outside this week to plant native ephemerals such as: wild ginger, wild geranium, Virginia bluebells, Mayapple, Dutchman's breeches, prairie trillium, and bloodroot. Click here to read more about some of these woodland flowers.