Have you ever wandered through Big Finn Hill Park and noticed the ivy climbing the trees, devouring the bushes and threatening to snag day dreaming pedestrians and bicyclists? Have you noticed that in some areas you can’t find any plants except ivy? Have you wondered how to harness the energy of seventy fifth graders productively? King County Parks’ volunteer coordinators suggested that bringing the fifth graders to the ivy would be a great combination. On November 1, seventy fifth graders from Sandburg elementary, their instructors and parents joined King County Parks volunteers in an invasive ivy remediation project north of the Finn Hill middle school track. The enthusiasm and energy were contagious. Within an hour, there were several mountains of ivy. One team focused on ivy climbing the trees, removing and severing the ivy around the bottom of the tree. The other teams went after the ivy on the ground, which was tangled in the sword ferns, American plum and salal. Some of the tidbits gleaned from our adventure: With careful pulling and a bit of luck, it is possible to pull out a single strand of ivy almost fifteen feet long. The ivy climbing the trees was older than the average fifth grader. We counted rings on a number of the stems and discovered one was 21 years old and several stems were at least 16. A clan...
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