Glad and sad tidings
First the good news. We’re grateful for the welcome help we’ve gotten from several groups this fall, including Washington Mutual on the Day of Caring; Seattle Pacific City Quest, a service project designed by SPU to help incoming freshmen get to know each other while they help others; and the UW Accounting Fraternity, Beta Alpha Psi, Delta Chapter. Their hard work has given us a big boost in the clearing and mulching we need to do along the Spring Street section of the ravine in conjunction with the creek daylighting. And six students from Seattle Girls School will be working weekly in the woods this fall as part of the school’s internship program.
We’ve started soliciting bids from possible contractors so we can start culvert and cove construction for the daylighting in March. We’ve recently purchased the plastic lumber and other lumber we’ll need for the three bridges and railings in that project with a $20,000 grant we got from the King County Council for 2006.
The sad news is that Ann Lennartz, one of the founders of our Friends of Madrona Woods group ten years ago, died September 6, 2006. Without her continuing dedication and support, we would certainly not have achieved nearly as much as we have in our restoration and education efforts. The Starflower Foundation, which she started after she left the Madrona Woods Board, gave us grants to purchase plants and cover landscape architect planning and provided naturalists to help us plan and staff our environmental education program during the formative years. She went on to start Seattle Urban Nature, which has surveyed habitat on Seattle’s public lands so the city and citizens can now better manage our open spaces.