Showing posts with label Friends of Trees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friends of Trees. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
First Planting of the Season
I spent this morning doing my first volunteer planting of the season with Friends of Trees! It felt goooood to get out and get some dirt on me and see bunches of little trees and shrubs that I planted. It always makes me feel awesome to know I'm doing my part in helping Oregon to be a little bit greener. I love seeing trees that I planted and watching their growth. I'm so proud of them! If you live in Portland (or Eugene or Vancouver!) and want to volunteer for a great program, check out Friends of Trees! I always have a great time and meet great people. Sometimes there are familiar faces and sometimes I meet a bunch of new volunteers. I heart FoT!
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Life Recap in Bullets and Pictures
Lots of busy stuff going on in life, but not too much worth writing full blog posts about, so here's a recap of what has been going on lately!
*I am now scheduled to work every weekend through the rest of the year for my friends with Saturday Market booths! This is totally awesome! And I'm scheduled for both Saturdays AND Sundays, which is extra awesome! All of that money is going into my trip fund!!
*Speaking of trips, I have decided that I'm going to shoot for REI's Machu Picchu volunteer vacation in November, 2013. That means I need to save up a minimum of $10,000 in the next year or so. Am I crazy?? I'd say yes, but then I realize that within the next few months I will have saved $10,000 for my Antarctica fund since I first decided to start saving last October. And that's just working my main job an average of 15 hours a week! All the rest has been side-hustle money!!! That's why I'm so thankful that my friends have been hiring me to work for them at the market, people have been buying my soap, I've been doing odd jobs here at there for various crafty friends, I've done more house-cleaning work, and I've house-sat for people's pets. BOOYEAH!
(Ahem, if you're feeling generous and would like to contribute to my Antarctica fund, even $5 helps!! The sooner that is paid for, the sooner I can pay for the trip that's more soon! ;o)
*I've now been back at home and not house-sitting for several days. It feels AWESOME! Not sleeping in my own bed for a month makes me extra thankful to have such a comfy bed to come home to.
*It's been crazy hot in Portland recently, in the mid-90s for days at a time. Ugh. Today and tomorrow it's supposed to be 100*. Our apartment stays fairly cool, but I don't like the really hot weather because I don't want to ride my bike in it. I overheat easily, so I am uncomfortable on the longer rides to and from work.
*I'm going to Ketchikan for a month in less than two weeks! Yippee!! I can't wait to see my friends!
*All of the soap in my shop is only $5 until I go to Ketchikan, when I'll then have to put my shop into vacation mode. Help a girl out!!
*I've been reading a ton lately. I need to do a post about the books I've read! I just started "The Art of Non-Conformity" and it's great!
House-sitting Dee and Lou
Whippets aren't normal, folks
Grumpers Lou
Finally found a cheap, crushable sun hat!
This lady at the market bought the same skirt as me! We're twinsies!
Summer inspecting my trees for Friends of Trees. Why do people buy trees and not care for them?
This Harvest Gold Linden was beautiful, well taken care of, and had stake flair!
SO nice to cook some real food when I got home from house-sitting!
Got my diploma in the mail! I'm officially official!
Monday, June 25, 2012
Best Day in June!
Heading to North Portland on a beautiful morning
Trying to get a good picture of the "sharrow"
More stop sign wisdom
YES. Best mat ever!
Getting Garry Oak ready
He dances!
Have you ever seen a dancing tree?
These people loved the dancing!
Garry's first hug of the day!
Greg and I are the only two people we know with "DON'T PANIC" tattoos
Garry and I!
All in all, it was a GREAT day and I had a ton of fun!!
P.S. Jenny has since updated the Friends of Trees Flickr with the photos we took yesterday, so I thought I'd link to them. Such happiness in all of them! What a great day for everyone! She got this shot of me giving a sticker to a little girl on her mom's bike. I love it!
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Friends of Trees GSI Rock Creek
On Wednesday I got to do some Team Wednesday volunteering that I don't normally get to do, which is helping out the Green Space Initiative (GSI) folk, instead of the Neighbourhood Trees program. Usually on Wednesdays I go out with a Friends of Trees staff member and another volunteer or two and we plant trees around Portland that didn't get planted on the usual Saturday planting days for one reason or another. There are usually four or five trees to plant and it's a good time, but this time I got to do something different! Two FoT staff members (Logan and Kris, who are lovely and very interesting and fun), three other volunteers, and I headed to a farm next to Rock Creek, where there has been some plantings happening to eventually help with water quality. There were hundreds of hunter orange surveyor's tape-tagged trees and shrubs that had previously been planted and we were there to plant 100 ocean spray shrubs and tube many of the trees that deer, bunnies, and beavers like to nibble on. It was a cold day and it rained and sometimes mixed in a little snow, but spirits were high and we had a great time!
Cool old barn next to the planting site
All of the orange-tagged shrubs were previously planted
I got to meet Kris, on the far right, on Wednesday. So nice!
My first job was to clear five spaces for planting shrubs around each stake. I think this one is funny because it's in the middle of piles of blackberry cane and a tree branch to boot. But I did it!
Using a specially-made "trailbrayker" (made by Mr. Bray here in town) to clear away grass and whatnot and get down to some good dirt!
Cutest baby Douglas Fir ever. And it looks like it's wearing a tiny scarf! ;o)
Kinda hard to tell, but there are a few hundred planted shrubs and trees here. Lots of surveyor's tape!
Then the weather started getting extra snotty, hence the water on the lens. I forget the name of this volunteer, but she was really nice! She was "tubing" the tree and then staking it with bamboo.
Tubes
More tubes!
Tubes, tubes, and even more tubes! And rain!
All in all, it was an awesome day and I had a bunch of fun AND I found out I am going to be one of the Summer Inspectors!! I'll get to walk around and check on trees and write a little report card for the home owners about how their tree is doing. I'm really excited to learn more about trees because I really don't know a whole lot yet, but every week I plant I learn something new, which is great. Knowing me, I will probably also want to name every tree and inform the home owner what their tree's name is. ;o)
I have two more plantings I'm able to make and then I go to Ketchikan and when I get back, planting season is over! I'll have to wait until fall to start planting again.
Friday, February 10, 2012
My Week In Pictures
I'm still here. I'm surprised I still have followers. What a bunch of hooey this week has been. Lots of good stuff going on with only a sprinkle of crappy stuff, which is nice. Still.
Remembered I mentioned I was cleaning a house? The people who were renting it left a bunch of garbage out that I thought I was going to have to deal with, but didn't end up having to. Yay! That saved me a lot of time and headache.
I got to dog-sit for my two whippet friends, Dee and Lou! They are the sweetest, funniest, goofiest dogs ever. I love them. Dee seems especially drawn to me. We are BFFs. This picture is a face I often saw. Dee in my face, wondering what the heck I was up to.
Lou Dog! Sleepies. He is so sweet.
For some reason, Dee kept wanting to check out my left eye. I joked to Krissy (her mom) that she could probably smell cancer in it. The debate is out. If I get left eye cancer when I'm older I'm going to shake my fist at foreshadowing.
I did some extra volunteering with Friends of Trees last Wednesday. We apparently got in a huge donation of yummy Kind bars from the company, which is AWESOME because they are sooooo good and have no gross, icky stuff in them, so FoT wanted to do some photos of us with the Kind bars out in the field. We took some other truly amazing photos, but this one cracked me up. I didn't realize no one else was doing anything "sassy." So, yeah. Story of my life, I think. (This photo is probably property of Friends of Trees and is theirs so please don't steal it because we just wanted to thank Kind bars for being so awesome and you should probably go buy a Kind bar and hug a tree.)
Harriet has a flower! We love Harriet in our house.
All I have to say is, "MINXIES!"
I bought gin 'n' juice makin' supplies because we don't want to spend the money to go out but we also don't want to spend the money on PBR all the time. This is the next best thing. (Texsun is the best grapefruit juice ever. It tastes like the juice I drank in Russia, which was amazing. Texsun is also crazy cheap so you should just drink it.)
Jeremiah Johnson loves gin and grapefruit juice.
A-O River! I finally put art up at my workspace last night. When I got home my calendar from Amy had fallen down, so it must be put back up again tomorrow. Stupid cheap Freddie's brand Scotch tape. (I love you, Freddie's, but this tape needs a little more sticky.)
Today the first ever meeting of "Adventurers Who Love Cats 'N' Cocktails" met at Uchu Sushi. Much sushi was eaten and adventures discussed. It was a very beneficial meeting to those who attended, which were Amy and myself.
And that is basically my week. How was yours? And what cool stuff are you doing this weekend?
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