We’re in Pittsburgh for the Urban Parks Summit. Over 600 participants from 12 countries talking about parks funding, strategy and financing, among many other things. More news later this week, but first a few photos of parks and trails in and around downtown…..
Today (9/9/08) C3 Presents, Inc., producers of the Austin City Limits Music Festival announced that they’ll donate $2.5 M to the Austin Parks Foundation to pay for Zilker Soccer Field improvements, a 42 acre site where ACLMF takes place. Beginning in January 2009, the City Parks Dept will level the field, install a complete irrigation system and lay down grass sod on the entire site. The work will take a number of months with the fields fenced off from January through early summer to allow the grass to fully take root and get established. The City approved the funds to do the work this year at the budget meetings on Monday, 9/8 and APF will reimburse the city via donations from C3 Presents, Inc. over the next few years. Stay tuned for further details, but the work will not affect other sites at Zilker Park, including the hike and bike trail.
Today we kicked off the fall volunteer workday season (ok, it certainly doesn’t feel like Fall out there right now) with a small volunteer workday at Palm Park to begin the process of spreading another 10 truckloads of soil (recycled from the Republic Square Park berms, I might add) and then the 8 truckloads of mulch. We’re restoring an area that was a crumbling tennis court, which was removed earlier this year thanks to Texas Gas Service, but we want to get grass growing there later this fall and the 8 truckloads of soil spread earlier in the year aren’t enough. So five of us spent a few hours out at Palm this morning spreading 1/10 of the total. So, we’ll need more workdays or maybe some helpful landscaper with a bobcat or both.
That's a lot of dirt to spread!
I then went over to help our great volunteers Jerry and Nadene drag cut brush (ligustrums and other invasive trees) to a chipper that wasn’t cooperating too much (dull blades, jamming a lot) while a small team of eCorps working under an APF grant were wielding chainsaws removing more ligustrums. Nadene and Jerry have done a fantastic job of removing invasives from 1/3 of the preserve and they are gearing up for more volunteer workdays in the coming weeks.
Thanks everyone!
Something historic happened today, we removed much of the berm that was surrounding the central Auction Oak. We had recently done some root zone mapping to see if there were roots in the berm and there were only a few, so today, the low stone wall was pulled apart, the dirt in the berm scooped up and hauled over to another downtown park, Sir Swante Palm Park, where we using it to fill in the site of an old tennis court, (We figured that the least we could do is recycle!) Here’s a few photos of the berms coming out.
And if you want to help spread the soil (and some mulch) at Palm Park (corner of SB frontage of I-35 and 3rd Street), one block from Red River, we’ll be out there from at least 9 am to noon Friday, Sept 5th and we’ll be happy to hand you a shovel or a rake. We have about 10 truckloads of soil to spread! Ask for Charlie.
Floating Down the Colorado...
We took advantage of Labor Day and headed to Webberville, about 20 miles east of Austin for an easy day of Kayaking on the Colorado River. We began at Travis County’s Little Webberville Park, with several of our group renting kayaks from Cook’s Canoes, who are located just a few doors down from the park. We enjoyed the lazy float for 5 of the 6 miles to Big Webberville Park, with the last mile prompting us to paddle due to a head wind that picked up. We also stopped about half way on a mid-river island for lunch and an extended swim. When we reached Big Webberville Park, Cook’s picked us up and transported our rented kayaks, plus our personal kayaks back to the start. A great day and we saw only one other group in two canoes behind us.
Local Flora and Fauna along the Colorado
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