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Watering the Canyon

September 9, 2011 by Elizabeth Weise

Rec and Park water truck.

By Murray Schneider

Glen Park News Canyon Correspondent

San Francisco high school chemistry students are back in school and hitting the books, but if any had hiked Glen Canyon Park trails on September 8th they’d have been surprised to see a City Park and Rec truck parked with a hulking 500-gallon tank wedged on its flatbed.

With the bigger-than-life H2O letters stenciled on its back and sides, the mobile reservoir signaled to any inquisitive freshman chemistry student that canyon plants and shrubs weren’t scheduled for pesticide treatment.

H20 means water. Pure and simple.

“Glen Canyon is a natural space,” said Rachel Kesel, a City gardener in the Rec and Park’s Natural Areas program. “Plants need to be watered, especially reintroduced ones.”

She pointed to the grassland that rises towards Berkeley Way, its slope peppered with hemlock, radish and Italian thistle.

“We’ve reintroduced horkelia, checkerbloom, and coyote mint up there,” she said. “Each requires water, especially now because it’s their first summer season up there.”

Glen Canyon isn’t Golden Gate Park, with its sculpted rose gardens and rhododendron dells, each supported by a labyrinthian network of sprinkler systems in the service of gardening domesticity.

Glen Canyon is an urban space tucked in the center of San Francisco, what Kesel, one of its stewards, calls a natural wilderness.

A long-time student of California native plants and a native of Georgia, Kesel acknowledges the salutary impact that reintroduced plants have on the 70-acre habitat she tends each week.

Natural Areas gardener, Randy Zebell, gathering California native plant seeds that will be taken to Golden Gate Park nursery to germinate and later reintroduced to Glen Canyon as a habitat for birds and to prevent soil erosion.

“We gather seeds from existing plants and then take them to our nursery near the carousel in Golden Gate Park,” she said. “They germinate there for nine months or so and then we replant them.”

After several hours wrestling with 100 feet of curled hose, hop-scotching it along the side of chert rock formations that poke out of tanned canyon slopes, Kesel finally rests by her truck, which she parked on the west side of Islais Creek, a pancake terrain that nurtures Islais cherry.

California native plant seeds reaped from Glen Canyon slopes that will be taken to Golden Gate Park nursery for nine months of germination before being reintroduced to Glen Canyon.

“Islais cherry is almost bashful,” she said of the prickly plant that provides a smorgasbord for the canyon avian population. “It won’t grow without healthy amounts of water.”

A gardening cohort, Jenny Sotelo, walked over. “Islais cherry is a bird’s best friend,” she smiled.

The California native plant with shiny green leaves attracts a variety of insects from which canyon sparrows and robins dine.

Friends of Glen Canyon Park volunteer, Janelle Reed, gathering Californian native plant seeds that will eventually be replanted in the canyon.

“Each plant takes a gallon of water,” Kesel said, gesturing to the hose. She turned her eyes back across the creek to the grassland from which she’d just descended. “Sometimes a gallon-and-a-half.”

Kesel secured the hose and prepared to leave the canyon. “Tomorrow we take the truck to Billy Goat Hill,” she said.

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IMPORTANT UPCOMING DATES

Arlington Path Beautification
Saturday, July 19, 10 a.m. to noon
Meet at 300 Mateo (x Arlington) for an exciting day of weeding, watering, seed collecting.
Tools, gloves and good company provided.


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Monthly cleanup on the Greenway
First Saturday of the Month (usually)
Click here to learn more


Friends of Glen Canyon’s
Glen Canyon Habitat Restoration
Every third Saturday 9:30 a.m to noon
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Glen Park Association is at Glen Park Greenway.
14 hours ago
Glen Park Association

Saturday’s Glen Park Greenway Work Party is Cancelled.

“I’m very sorry to say that
we have cancelled our Work Party for this Saturday July 12, along with all organized volunteer activity on the Greenway until further notice.
As you may have read in the news, our fiscal sponsor, San Francisco Parks Alliance (SFPA), has shut itself down. Just as SFPA has shut itself down, the Greenway, as an organized part of SFPA, has also been “shut down.” We are busy looking for a suitable alternative fiscal sponsor that is willing to replace SFPA. That search is going well but it is a slow process. We had hoped to find temporary ways to enable the Greenway project to function responsibly as a community activity without a fiscal sponsor. Sadly, despite our best efforts and the help of many others in Glen Park, we have failed. That is why we must cancel our Saturday Work Party and discontinue future work parties and other organized volunteer activity on the Greenway (like weeding and watering) until further notice. We recognize that the Greenway is public open space and that the organizers of the Greenway project have no control over the activities of you or of anyone else on the Greenway. However, if you do venture onto the Greenway to satisfy your urge for outdoor recreation, please be aware that your activity is not in any way organized or sanctioned by the organizers of the Glen Park Greenway project. I’m well aware of the efforts that many of the
Greenway’s supporters are making to get the Greenway organized with a new fiscal sponsor and I’m confident that this will be arranged within weeks or perhaps a few months.
However long it takes, I will contact you with news of our progress.
Many thanks for all that you do for the Greenway.”

Nicholas Dewar, volunteer Project Director

#glenparkgreenway #glenparksf #sanfrancisco @rafaelmandelmand8 @danielluriesf @crosstowntrail
#crosstowntrail #sfparksalliance #publicspace #nature
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Wonder what’s stopping just organizing it separate from that non-profit. It seems like the volunteers largely come from Glen Park.

Glen Park Association is at Laidley Street SFO.
4 days ago
Glen Park Association

It was a beautiful day for the annual #july4th celebration on Laidley street!

📷: Photos courtesy of Michael Waldstein

#glenparksf #sanfrancisco #laidley
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It was a beautiful day for the annual #july4th celebration on Laidley street! 

📷: Photos courtesy of Michael Waldstein 

#glenparksf #sanfrancisco #laidley
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Blog Roll

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Upper Noe Neighbors

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