Tuesday, May 7th, 2013
7:00pm 400 Blk Arlington Stolen Vehicle
9:30pm Chenery/Diamond Theft from Vehicle

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013
9:39am Castro/30th Traffic Collision
5:11pm Unit Blk Natick Recovered Vehicle

Thursday, May 9th, 2013
2:15pm 100 Blk Bosworth Vandalism to Vehicle

Friday, May 10th, 2013
7:00pm 100 Blk Moffitt Theft from Vehicle

Saturday, May 11th, 2013
Nothing to report from Glen Park.

Sunday, May 12th, 2013
Nothing to report from Glen Park.

Monday, May 13th, 2013
11:30am Unit Blk Topaz Vandalism to Property

4:26am 2800 Blk Diamond
Burglary: Suspect #1; Black male, Between 18 to 25 yrs old, unknown
height, about 350 pounds, bald and unknown eye color, last seen
wearing a Red shirt with a Black cut off shirt over it, Blue shorts
and Black pants and carrying a Yellow sledge hammer. Suspect #2; Black
male, between 18 to 25 yrs old, Unknown height, about 190 pounds, last
seen wearing a Blue zip-up hoodie, Black jeans, Grey gloves and
carrying a Yellow crowbar. Suspect Vehicle; a Black 4 door sedan.
Front entrance damaged with no loss reported.

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
3:37pm 200 Blk Miguel Recovered Vehicle

Thursday, April 25th, 2013
4:19pm Unit Blk Chenery Harassing Phone Calls
9:30pm 200 Blk Bemis Vandalism to Property

Friday, April 26th, 2013
Nothing to report from Glen Park.

Saturday, April 27th, 2013
Nothing to report from Glen Park.

Sunday, April 28th, 2013
4:40pm Unit Blk Brompton Recovered Vehicle

Monday, April 29th, 2013
2:40pm Unit Blk Lippard Attempted Theft
from Vehicle
10:45am Bosworth/Lippard Traffic Collision
11:40pm San Jose/Arlington Hit and Run

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
12:15pm Bosworth/Oshaugnessy Fraud

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
10:45am Unit Blk Bosworth Vehicle Tampering

Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
1:00am 2800 Blk Diamond Theft from Vehicle

Friday, May 3rd, 2013
10:15am 2800 Blk Diamond Theft, Pickpocket
7:15pm Kern/Diamond Theft from Vehicle

Saturday, May 4th, 2013
Nothing to report from Glen Park.

Sunday, May 5th, 2013
12:05am 200 Blk Mangels Stolen Vehicle

Monday, May 6th, 2013
5:19pm Thor/Surrey Traffic Collision

Gloria Koch, kneeling in Glen Canyon’s Fox Meadow. Gloria is among yarrow and California poppies. Fox Meadow is above Silver Tree Camp and if hikes go there they should watch for poison oak. Photo taken May 1, 2013

By Murray Schneider

After 28 years working as a horticulturist for San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department, Gloria Koch simply couldn’t walk away from work she loved.

So the 20-year Diamond Street resident, after retiring six months ago, began volunteering with Friends of Glen Canyon Park.

Gloria Koch ready for a day volunteering along Glen Canyon’s Willow Loop Trial.

“A gardener’s job is body joy,” she said one recent Wednesday morning while removing invasive mustard high above Glen Canyon’s floor. “They aren’t many jobs where you can earn a salary and exercise at the same time.”

Koch was born in Havana, Cuba and has lived in San Francisco since 1977. She looks like she stepped from the pages of an original Banana Republic advertisement, not the current ones that depict models who favor Don Draper and Holly Golightly but the original ads, the ones that ballyhooed gear better suited for the grasslands of the Serengeti than the sidewalks of Madison and Fifth Avenues.

For her weekly work parties, supervised by Rec and Park’s Natural Areas Program, Koch dons a broad brim sun hat, banded with a jaunty purple bandana. The neckerchief complements a vest with zippered pockets and crisp khakis, cuffed just above ancient mud-caked work boots.

The boots held her in good stead through her years working at City parks such as Crocker-Amazon, Dolores Park, Union and Portsmouth Square, Coit Tower, Upper Noe and Julius Kahn playgrounds, Civic Center and eventually as a manager in John McLaren-sculpted Golden Gate Park.

“It was always exciting to go to work each morning,” she said. “The field work was demanding but always meaningful and working with machines was industrial strength.”

All this may be true for the well-traveled Koch, who early on worked as an Amazon River tour guide in Colombia and who swam in South American waters with electric eels and even piranhas, and even now thinks it was all exciting.

But she recognizes that there are primal benefits working in the outdoors.

“Gardening is meditative and puts you in the present moment, which is particularly important in the modern world” she said, with both the touch of a philosopher and a poet. “Glen Canyon allows you to sense and gives you the gift of hearing an owl’s hoot, a coyote’s howl and a song bird’s whistle.”

After a long career in civil service Koch has even more time to hone her senses. She volunteers each Wednesday in her neighborhood’s 70-acre backyard for the Natural Areas Program, which is pledged to habitat restoration and citizen stewardship.

Gloria Koch volunteering in Glen Canyon’s seep, above the Willow Creek Trail.

“Glen Canyon is our park and it refreshes our minds,” she said. “We want to be surprised when we come here, experiencing the natural world out of the box and on uneven ground.”

She put aside the mattock she’d been using to unearth a scrum of inimical mustard.

“We’re so lucky as a community we can take a trail and experience not only woodland, but meadows, shrubs, rock formations and a creek,” she said. “I love getting around our charming urban village and also getting away to the breezes and beauty of our canyon.”

Commonly seen walking its paths, Koch enthused about the recently completed Saddle Trail Project. It was funded by a $157,000 NAP administration written grant.

“The box and stringer steps are designed gracefully,” she said about 100 plus steps that lead hikers through two chert rock outcroppings above the Willow Loop Trail. “They’re a work of art.”

“If you build it, they will come,” she said of the recently completed switchbacks that curl between the serrated rocks. The new path ensures that hikers will not stray off trail and trample the habitat-friendly vegetation.

Glen Canyon is unique, featuring greenery such as eucalyptus and redwood trees that share space with coastal oaks, columbine and monkey flower  as well as California buckeye and Arroyo willow that shade Douglas iris and coyote brush.

“There’s nothing like spotting a coyote or hearing a woodpecker,” she said. “It gives your brain a rest. You can’t learn everything from a book. Experiencing the natural world directly is so satisfying.”

“And the canyon grassland,” she continued. “It’s significant because it produces so much oxygen and is so rare in the city.”

Grassland is important habitat for raptors such as the Great-Horned Owl that recently returned to the front of the canyon. Above a Red-tailed hawk circled Koch, scouting for its mid-day meal.

Koch returned to extricating a thistle’s taproot. The noonday sun reflected off her wide-brimmed hat.

“Butterflies, like people, are more active in mid-day,” she observed. “They’re more visible over grasslands especially when the sun shines and whenever sun hits flowers the nectar flows.”

A natural area such as Glen Canyon needs management, even more so because man disturbed it in the 1930s by bulldozing a snaking swath of road called O’Shaughnessy Boulevard through it. In the 1960s mounds of excavated soil were dumped here during the development of Diamond Heights. The resulting giant earthen breastwork, now home to carpets of colonizing radish and suitably dubbed Radish Hill by the Friends of Glen Canyon, gives ample testimony to the embarrassing paucity of environmental sensitivity only a generation ago.

 “A public park needs to be managed,” said Koch, “and then plant diversity can lead to animal diversity, which provides surprises for us such as seeing a coyote when we visit.”

But what about man’s best friend, which doesn’t need to hunt and hide in the natural area habitat? A long time gardener, Koch minces few words.

“Dogs should be on a leash,” she said. “I’ve been bitten by a dog, but never by a coyote.”

“Besides,” she continued, “we wouldn’t want the pooches surprised by the coyote, would we?”

She is an unabashed booster for the Natural Areas Program. “The NAP preserves and protects the best we have,” she said. “Its work is so subtle and it leaves few fingerprints and its canyon track record speaks for itself.”

An example is found behind the eucalyptus that offers sanctuary to the nesting mother owl. There a Natural Areas Program project stands on both sides of Islais Creek. With the assistance of Glen Park volunteers and a grant from Levi Strauss, NAP reintroduced an oasis of California native plants such as coffee berry that replaced spent syringes and jagged beer bottles.

“This nature habitat enhancement is a marvelous change,” Koch said, as a house finch perched on a pink flowering currant limb. “It’s such an improvement.”

Koch is convinced native shrubby offers aesthetic benefits as well as environmentally friendly ones. “We can use California native plants ornamentally,” she said. “They are attractive, but also sustainable, low maintenance and their diversity only enhances the canyon’s ecosystem.”

Koch is just as upbeat about the environmentally friendly work now making inroads in front of the canyon, where a $5.8 million 2008 Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond is footing the bill for relocating tennis courts up the Elk Street hill and carving out a parent-friendly approach for children walking to Glenridge Co-op nursery school and Silver Tree summer camp.

“I’ve never seen a better categorization of waste materials, sorted and processed in such neat piles,” she said, referring to the construction project-in-progress. “San Francisco leads the nation in recycling and this project appears to be a shining example of government-contractor competence.”

An inveterate hiker, used to scaling mountains in Chile, Spain and our own American backcountry, Koch just returned from a six-week trek in Patagonia. “I was on a vision quest,” she said, a smile creasing her sun-tanned face.

She’ll find peaks in Glen Canyon and recreational trails that aren’t nearly as steep as the ones she challenged in South America last month.

Pop-up bag hoisted on her shoulder, Gloria Koch negotiates the Saddle Trail switchback after a day’s volunteering in Glen Canyon.

For Gloria Koch volunteering in Glen Canyon is about living a coherent life. The money-strapped Natural Areas Program’s eight gardeners need additional volunteers to push back against weeds that threaten to smother ecosystems such as the ones found atop Mt. Davidson, Bernal Hill and Corona Heights.

In the front of the canyon, the sated mother owl’s ears poked from a cluster of eucalyptus leaves high in the tree, a sight Koch would have unlikely seen in manicured Golden Gate Park.

“Owls follow diversity,” she said, looking toward the tree that has become a wild life laboratory for so many wide-eyed neighborhood children. That same natural area that sustains Koch, as well.

“I’m so grateful to this city for welcoming an immigrant such as me,” she said, “and the merit system that allowed a Hispanic and a woman to work in our parks for the common good.”

If anyone would like to volunteers with the Natural Areas Program, they can contact Joe Grey, the NAP volunteer coordinator, at joe.grey@sfgov.org or Jean Conner, Friends of Glen Canyon Park, at 415-584-8576.

Poison oak in Glen Canyon. Photo by Ashley Hathaway

A warning about poison oak in the Canyon

I was emailing with Murray Schneider, who writes about the Canyon on the Glen Park News blog, and he warned me that there’s a lot of poison oak out right now.

In fact his exact words where “Where isn’t there poison oak?”

He suggests staying on the trails to avoid it.

“Anything off trail, particularly high up amidst the California coastal scrub you’ll find it intermingled with plants and grasses. It also can appear on or around rock outcroppings. I’ve seen near the trails beyond the new Saddle Trail steps, on the way up to Turquoise Way, in Fox Meadow and near the Angelica rocks.”

He’s also been told it’s growing among the Cape ivy above Glenridge.

Poison oak “follows Himalayan and California blackberry close to trail edges, so tell people to avoid brushing against plants immediately adjacent to trail edges.”

“It looks like California blackberry, three leaves together. But it much more glossy and oily and it doesn’t have little thorns such as blackberry does. Right now it is really shiny!!”

Ashley Hathaway notes that is is very easy for dogs to get it on their coats while wandering in the canyon and then people get it from their dogs when they pet and brush them.

When it hasn’t leaved out “it huddles together in clumps of naked “sticks.” The stalks looks benign, but if one touches the “sticks,” which still contain harmful oils, one can get burned.”

Murray’s had some nasty experiences with it working in the canyon and recommends washing clothing that’s come into contact with it and to immediately bath with a product such as Tecnu, which can be purchased at REI. Ashley notes that it’s also available at Walgreen’s and many other large pharmacies in the area.

The best advice: “Stay on trail!”

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
2:58am           Unit Blk Monterey                    Burglary

Thursday, April 18th, 2013
3:06pm           Oshaughnessy/Bosworth           Traffic Collision

Friday, April 19th, 2013
9:51pm       2800 Blk Diamond                 Theft
Officers Lustenberger and Chew were patrolling the Glen Park
neighborhood when they answered a report of a group of citizens
detaining a theft suspect. When the officers arrived, they found two
citizens had detained a man and a woman suspected of stealing a bag
from a nearby business. One of the citizens told the officers that he
was sitting, with his bag on a table, when he turned away for a
moment. When he looked back, the bag, containing his passport and
other personal items, was gone. He quickly ran outside and saw a woman
holding the bag and walking down the street with an unknown man. He
approached the woman and yelled, “That’s my bag” and pulled it from
her grasp. The theft victim, along with an employee who followed the
victim from the business, then detained both suspects until officers
Chew and Lustenberger arrived. The theft victim signed a citizen’s
arrest and the woman was booked at Ingleside Station for the theft.
Her male companion, who claimed he didn’t know the suspect, was
released. Report number: 130321047

11:00am           100 Blk Moreland                    Fraud
12:10pm           Unit Blk Everson                      Harassing Phone Calls
1:00pm           5200 Blk Diamond Heights       Burglary
11:08pm           Bosworth/Cuvier                      Traffic Collision

Saturday, April 20th, 2013
Nothing to report from Glen Park.

Sunday, April 21st, 2013
5:30pm           100 Blk Bemis                         Stolen Vehicle

Monday, April 22nd, 2013
10:27pm     Bosworth/Marsily                            Robbery
Officers Carrasco and Dominguez were responding to another call when
they were flagged down by a man, who said he was robbed by two men
after exiting the Glen Park BART station. The victim told the officers
he was walking down Bosworth Street when he saw two men approaching
him on the sidewalk. The victim crossed the street to avoid the men,
but the suspects turned and followed him. When the suspects reached
the victim they grabbed his shirt and pushed him up against the wall
on a building. One of the robbers told the victim, “this will only
hurt for a minute. Give me everything”. The two robbers took the
victims red bag with clothing, books and eye glasses, and then reached
into his jacket and took more clothing, a wallet containing credit
cards, ID cards, miscellaneous business cards, and a cell phone before
running away. The officers broadcast a description of the suspects
and, a short time later, Ingleside Officers Ma and Hauscarriague
radioed they located some of the victim’s property on the 100 block of
Rousseau Street. Officer Hauscarriague also broadcast that he noticed
a tall wooden fence in the area moving back and forth and “crunching”
sound coming from the other side of the fence. Other Ingleside
officers responded to the scene and Officer Hauscarriague peered over
the fence and spotted the two suspects in the backyard of a residence.
They were immediately taken into custody and a search of the two
robbers found some of the victim’s clothing along with his wallet.
Both suspects were taken to Ingleside Station and booked on a variety
of charges. Report number: 130330355

6:00pm           200 Blk Mateo                         Theft from Vehicle

An owl nesting in Glen Canyon Park. Photo by Evelyn Rose.

Last fall the male Great Horned Owl that  lived in Glen Canyon was found dead. A necropsy revealed that he had eaten a poisoned mouse or rat.  With his demise  many all been concerned about the mating prospects this year. No nesting activity had been observed.

But today Evelyn Rose of the Tramps of San Francisco blog, wrote with excellent news. On Tuesday she and a friend looked at the owls’ tree with binoculars  and it appears the female of the pair is sitting in the nest.

She wonders if anyone has seen eggs?

This steep hillside garden, in the area of Malta Drive near O’Shaughnessy Blvd., will be a new one on the tour this year. The owner/gardener has done wonders with adaptable native plants in this challenging terrain. Photo by Margo Bors.

By Jeanne Halpern

T. S. Eliot notwithstanding, April is not the cruelest month.  In Glen Park, in fact, it may be the kindest month for the senses, when native plants in public and private gardens seem to have no goal other than to delight.  Walk the trails in Glen Canyon Park and, at the boardwalk, savor the bright yellow of seep monkey flowers beside the deep blue of Douglas iris.  Or visit any or all of more than twenty private gardens open to the public for one day only on the San Francisco Native Plant Garden Tour.

Lush hillside garden at 34 Valletta. Photo by Margo Bors.

That day is Sunday, April 28, and this year, about half of the gardens are in the Glen Park-Noe Valley-Sunnyside-Mt. Davidson area.  You’ll discover native plants in sun and shade, in front and back yards, in driveways and on small sidewalk strips, and in flower pots on decks, porches and patios.  You’ll see traditional gardens where native plants have been combined with exotics from far and wide.  You’ll find gardens with California natives only – and even gardens with only San Francisco natives.  Some gardens are easy-access and others are webbed with trails and stairways.  Fortunately, the garden lists provided on the website (see below) indicate the few gardens that some people might find challenging.  In any case, a walking stick and sturdy shoes can be helpful.

Lupine in all native garden at 34 Valletta. Photo by Margo Bors

Sponsored by the Yerba Buena chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the 2013 tour will also offer opportunities to talk with local gardeners about starting native plant gardens and which plants thrive in this area.  You’ll be able to pick up pamphlets about the advantages of natives, such as saving on water bills, attracting more birds, insects and butterflies to your garden, and keeping your garden colorful all year round.  In my garden, for instance, forty-eight species of natives were in bloom last April and sixty-two in May, but even January boasted thirteen, including manzanita (pink and white), ceanothus (many shades of blue), tree mallow (bright fuchsia) and the graceful silk tassel (luminous white).  There’s never a month without a bloom, and where there are blooms, can birds and bees be far behind?

Poppies and phacelia from above garden. Photo by Margo Bors.

The self-guided tour is free and open to the public on Sunday, April 28, from 11am—3 pm.  For information and maps for the 2013 tour, go to http://cnps-yerbabuena.org/gardentour in April.  To get a general sense of what the tour has been like in recent years, go to the same website and look at the 2012 or 2011 tour any time.  If you have specific questions, contact the tour chairperson, Susan Floore, at sfloore@att.net and be sure to write “Garden Tour” in the subject line.

Alison Draper and Neil Mitchell were married at Glen Canyon’s angelica rocks, so named because the chert outcropping high above the canyon over shadow angelica wildflowers.

Alison Draper came to Glen Canyon to pull mustard and returned a month later to get married.

On March 9 she and her partner Neil Mitchell stood above the canyon floor next to the angelica rocks. That’s what the Friends of Glen Canyon Park call them, because the wildflower that looks like Queen Anne’s Lace thrives on a rocky slope there.

Mike Watson marrying Alison Draper and Neil Mitchell.

As far as anyone knows, it may be the first wedding ever in Glen Canyon.

For the occasion, Draper exchanged the sheaves of mustard she’d removed only days before for a bouquet of ornamental flowers brought to the ceremony by Kay Westerberg, another Recreation and Park Natural Area Program volunteer Draper had only known for two months.

“I made a connection with the canyon from the first,” Draper said, by way of explaining her nascent voluntary efforts along side Westerberg.

Mustard loomed large in her introduction to our canyon. It was introduced to San Francisco by early settlers for its use as chicken and goat fodder. Up in Napa Valley vineyards use mustard as a cover crop and green mulch. It’s even celebrated at Mustard Festivals. But in Glen Canyon it crowds out plants like Glen Canyon horkelia, yarrow, blue-eyed grass and coyote brush, beloved by the birds, butterflys and animals that rely on them for food and shelter.

Alison weeding mustard.

As a volunteer Draper helps to keep it in check. But on a sunny afternoon the second Saturday in March mustard was far from her mind.

For the nuptials, she wore a dress, patterned with British arts and crafts flowers, a far cry from the jeans and long sleeved T-shirts shirt she dons wrestling hemlock and radish. “The floral patterns are from the 1920s,” said the bride, about the red and green flowers that favored her dress.

“I thought the floral arrangement,” said Kay Westerberg, the single guest, “perfectly matched Alison’s shoes.”

Alison Draper moved to Chenery Street in January with her partner of 11 years, and within a month she’d made inquiries about volunteering with the Friends of Glen Canyon Park. Originally from Brighton, England, Draper wasted little time filling her week with additional voluntary undertakings. She now works several hours at Hillcrest Elementary School, tutoring first graders in the school’s reading program.

“It was a bit challenging for the children to get by my accent,” said Draper, whose elocution rivals stage-trained Stratford-on-Avon actors. “But now I’m getting to know them and their characters are coming through.”

She’s digging in. She’ll next shoulder a quarterly Glen Park News paper route, which will take her to familiar neighborhood avenues such as Brompton, Lippard and Chilton. If all of this isn’t enough to keep her busy, she’s throwing in her lot with volunteers at Grace Center, a San Francisco program assisting 12 women in drug and alcohol recovery.

“Neil and I enjoy walking,” Draper said, trying to wrap her mind around the Hamerton Avenue steps, part of her imminent newspaper route, but not as steep as where she now stood, ready to exchange vows with Neil Mitchell. “I treasure the aroma of canyon eucalyptus trees.”

Over a century ago Adolph Sutro planted so many eucalyptus trees in Glen Canyon that it became known for a time as Gum Tree Ranch and walking beneath its fragrant branches is second nature to San Franciscans.

To recently-arrived British neighbors, it’s an entirely new experience.

Photo by Richard Craib.

“It so nice to have this on our doorstep,” said Mitchell, gesturing to the canyon behind him, silhouetted against thickets of lichen-draped Arroyo willow, which act as sanctuary to birds darting in and out for a smorgasbord of insects.

The wedding party gathered at the angelica rocks at 1 P.M. Near a chiseled chert outcropping they came across a quartet of shamanic worshippers. The group called themselves Breath of Creation and had staked out a nearby space where they stood chanting in a circle while holding hands.

On surrounding slopes, California poppies rustled in a breeze’s caress, pushing back against the invasive oxalis.

Near  where the humming Breath of Creation group stood, toward Elk Street, the canyon earlier once had housed a dairy, stable and barn. After the 1906 earthquake and fire, the floor was used as a temporary encampment for San Franciscans made homeless. Negotiating the same fields now, one could believe it. Its turf, pockmarked and potholed, is better suited for pitching pup tents than shagging pop flies. In the 1850s, Forty-Niners prospected for gold along Islais Creek, and in 1869 the Giant Powder Works dynamite building blew up in what became known as the Glen Canyon or Rock Gulch Explosion.

Lots of history in Glen Canyon and more was about to be made.

The bride and groom joined hands, looking for a suitable place to recite their vows. Calvin Pennington, Mitchell’s brother, performed the role of best man. Trailing them, Jadey, Pennington’s dog, sprinted figure eights around the couple. Puffs of clouds softened the sky as the dog became distracted by song sparrows skipping among cypress branches.

Mike Watson, of the Universal Life Church, led the couple through a brief ceremony. When he asked Draper the age-old question, she simply said:

“I will.”

The couple kissed, as gently as the wisp of air that had whispered to the California state flower.

Jadey returned and circled the newlyweds in a congratulatory victory lap.

“This is such a beautiful spot,” opined Watson, returning his matrimonial script to his coat pocket. The newlyweds moved closer to where the Breath of Creation had completed their chanting.  As they poised for photographs, the religious quartet slipped by.

“It’s a lovely day,” said one of the shamanic devotees, “and was special to share this space with you both.”

The plan now called for a Calistoga honeymoon, but only for a few days since Draper scheduled a return to the rocks the following Wednesday, ready to resume jousting with colonizing mustard.

The wedding couple being attended by Jadey, family canine.

Though not yet in flower they were surrounded by angelica plants, beloved of varied pollinating insects and butterflies and used in Europe to flavor a baba cake, according to Destinations Bakery’s Joe Schuver.

Whether the newly-weds planned to exchange bites of wedding cake at their home up the street from Tyger’s isn’t known. But given their wedding site, genuflection to an angel somehow seemed appropriate.

“It a beautiful white flower,” said Jeanne Halpern when asked about it after the wedding and who grows angelica in her California native plant garden on Valletta Court across from Glen Canyon. “The flower looks like an angel, standing so straight and proud.”

The newlyweds reached their car and headed down Berkeley Way, turned right on Elk Street where they passed the four members of Breath of Creation descending single file along the street that parallels Glen Canyon.

“It was such a lovely day in such beautiful surroundings and ever so nice that Kay came to see us tie the knot,” said the bride.

Rooting out all the mustard in Glen Canyon might take 100 years and 100 volunteers. But it took only one man of the cloth to tie the knot for Mr. and Mrs. Neil Mitchell.