Billed as a day to "put garbage in its place" the 7th Annual North Smithfield Clean and Green Day appears to have been a tremendous success yesterday. My husband, Paul, is Chairman of the North Smithfield Conservation Commission. He and the other commission members formed a team to clean up a parcel of land in town that is being donated to North Smithfield. He also enlisted the help of myself, Paul, Jr., and four of our grandchildren: Katie, Madeleine, Travis & Julia.
Left dormant for many years, the property was once a business, Green Meadow Nursery. As we raked the tons of leaves that have mulched down over the years, we uncovered daffodils, bugle weed, hardy geraniums, lungwort and a few others I couldn't identify. There are also two magnolias which were just getting ready to pop plus an enormous larch and an assortment of cedars, holly, rhododendrons & azaleas. It was a little like a horticultural scavenger hunt. Julia, Trav & Maddy helped clean up a shed and found a mouse nest. Katie just put her head down and raked and raked and raked.
Over the course of the day, 13 of us worked at the property. We raked, we clipped, we carted, we trimmed. We filled up a dump truck 3 times with dead branches. Teams of 2-3 toted a tarp loaded with leaves off to the side. We worked for a total of 43 man hours. When we finally called it quits at 3:30, the property looked beautiful!
This morning when I woke up, my sore muscles told me I had done a hard day's work but thinking back to what we accomplished, it feels good!
5 comments:
Wow! Sounds like a super productive day. I know both Katie and Madeleine worked hard and felt as though they really had accomplished something important. Madeleine was not too thrilled with the mouse nest, however. LOL!
It was a really great day, Pam. It was especially nice to have the kids there with us. They were all really anxious to get to work as soon as we arrived and they were a lot of help.
I heard Travis held "the mouse". I wish that our entire family could have contributed more but the day was packed with three different sporting events. Please include us again. Hey Sandy, nice blog!
Martha
We did something like that down here as well called Beach Sweep, where we'd go in huge crew boats and clean the barrier islands of trash. It was stinky, nasty, dirty, and loads of fun.
Wow, Alex, you used boats! That really sounds like fun.
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