Pollinator Paradise with EYA and Eric Hamber High School

We're in Oak Meadows Park at eight in the morning and we're here to help the Environmental Youth Alliance plant a Pollinator's Paradise. The park is enveloped in fog, softening the edges of the world, and creating a sense of a suspended disbelief. The spiders have been here before us, industriously setting dew-laden traps for the last moths of autumn.

 The lupins are left to seed themselves to create more habitat for bumble bees.

We shift plants in pots to the garden beds. All the bushes and trees are local native species, super-foods for local pollinators and supermarkets for songbirds.

 Students appear out of the distant fog, as if magicked by garden elves.

 Gradually these trees and bushes will naturalize into the existing park flora and create a rich biodiverse region that functions on many beneficial levels, for humans and critters.

We came, we planted, we weeded, and we had a light snack.

We had the benefits of physical labor, companionship, fresh air and granola bars.

Plants like Oregon grape also look gorgeous in their fall colors.

Adam checks out the clay discs mason bees will use in the spring to create walls in their creches.

 Massaging the roots is a most important part of the planting process.

Soon the plants will be producing fruit, like these elderberries.  I ate some because they are delicious, healthy and because I was the eldest person around. Thanks to everyone who came out and helped make the world a better place for us all.