Week 10: Working hard

June 7th - 10th

What a week. This week we worked with so many volunteer groups it is hard to keep them separate in my mind. On Monday and Tuesday we had a Grand Canyon Youth (GCY) group working with us all day. GCY is based out of Flagstaff and they seem like pretty awesome organization. They lead groups of youth (middle school through high school) on river trips and in service. Kids apply for these trips from all around the country and even some international students are included as well. We started out the week planting P10 with GCY. Honestly it was a pretty hot day which lead to low morale within the group. We got a large portion of the planting done, but there are still plants waiting at the nursery to get in the ground. The next day we changed it up a bit so that they got to do a variety of tasks. We started watering P5/6 and we also started mulching and seeding the area. They seemed to take to the task like champs. Seeding requires a bit of coordination and teamwork and I think they succeeded in the task. After we sent them on their way we continued to water that area. Over the week we completed watering the rest of our project sites. We worked with ACE and YCC on Wednesday and Thursday this week. They completed the seeding and mulching over at P5 and helped prep for our volunteers for the following week. YCC staged caging and materials at P5 while ACE helped clean up tools and did duff collection out at Rowe Well Road. We have so many volunteer groups right now it is necessary to use them to prepare for the next volunteer group. We are blessed with extra hands and good volunteers, but at the same time we need time to learn and do things ourselves. It is spring here and it is about time we started attacking the invasive problem in our restoration sites. They are only getting worse each day that goes by. We started pulling them this week in our free time and found that invasive ID is not our strong point yet. Oh, and I forgot to mention how great our YCC group is. They are composed mostly of high school kids who live here at the south rim. Most of them have planted with us in the past... see our previous entry on earth day. They take to whatever task is given to them very easily. They love working with our water buffaloes, and seem to take pride in their work. Frustrations this week seem to revolve around watering and the irrigation system. It is not completely working yet. I guess we'll find out next week if it is functional.