We had a wonderful time today with our first invasive removal of the year! In what may have been a first, we had more volunteers than committee members! A huge shout out and thanks to Wren, Lura (sp?), and Tom! Thank you so much for coming out! We had a blast and hope you did too!
Today’s removal was largely focused on multi-flora rose, japanese honeysuckle, and garlic mustard. While it’s a great time to remove the garlic mustard, it’s extra challenging because it’s currently still a bit small.
We removed plants from directly west of the Easthampton Feed Store (directly behind), and then from about halfway between that spot and the area behind the former ed’s body shop. It’s a great time of year to get to the multi-flora rose and the japanese honeysuckle, because you can see them and get to them easily since the native plants really aren’t coming up yet!
Unfortunately, we had some folks abutting the work area who were sad we were removing plants; they liked the early green interest and we could not yet convince them that the plants we were removing are actively harmful. Someday, we hope to have a source of winter interest plants we could introduce to those areas, like inkberry, red chokeberry, wintergreen, partridgeberry, etc!
Look out for an email to the volunteer list with a doodle question for an out-of-cycle invasive removal! We’re hoping to have an extra one or two so we can work with some students who haven’t been able to make our regular ones!