Installing bike counters

Installing bike counters
Originally uploaded by Dale331

MTA personnel were in the Panhandle this morning to install a bicycle counter into the bike path. It's located west of Masonic. While the area is blocked off, you can detour through the paved area and then rejoining the path.  Read Bike NOPA for more on these devices in the neighborhood.

New work protects the Panhandle's trees and improves its soil

The ongoing efforts to protect and enhance the Panhandle Park have included promoting healthier soil, and this has been accomplished in part by adding fresh materials to the area below our mature trees. The result is - to me, anyway - an upgrade in the attractiveness of the park. Starting from the park's east end near Baker, the work, conducted by both second-Saturday volunteers and staff gardeners, has improved the appearance of the redwood groves, and also - below - around the two mature Brisbane Box trees:

Moving in this material (which has included both mulch and composted material) has taken quite an effort, and there are other reasons for this work besides adding to the beauty of the park. The benefits to the trees, as I understand it, are primarily to provide a layer of protection from feet, paws, and anything else that can poke or gouge the tree's roots (obviously, with roots near the surface being the most vulnerable). In addition, the fresh soil brings nutrients and, compared to a carpet of grass, helps the roots to breathe. Lastly, since mulch suppresses weeds and grass, there's no need for the lawnmowers to ride right up to (and occasionally scar) the tree trunks.  

Building these rings to the circumference of the tree's branches leaves plenty of room for people looking for a picnic on the grass, and hopefully will lead to fewer uprooted trees, such as these two which crashed down (or, to look at it another way, sprang up) in February 2010. One of my goals this year is to find a way to support the effort to improve soil quality across the entire park, including grassy areas. Not only would that make a better looking park with healthier plants, but it has the potential to reduce the demand for irrigation, a major drain on the city's budget.

 

One online source confirms that mulching around trees is "good horticultural practice" and lists an additional benefit I had overlooked: it "absorbs dog piddle." 

January work day wrap up

Our park's benches - especially those near the restroom and basketball courts - have been described as unappealing. One person said they looked like they were sinking into the mud. 

The benches are mounted into asphalt, so it wasn't so much a matter of benches sinking, as it was that dirt, weeds, and trash were creeping up and around them. So on Saturday, our gardeners began working with neighborhood volunteers on an excavation. It's an important and timely project, because this area of the park will soon receive capital improvements - but the benches are expected to stay.

At the monthly work day Saturday, park volunteers spread in two groups. While I worked with one group in the east end, a group of students in the fourth grade at the SF Day School took to caring for the playground - spreading new soil into the Kevin Collins Children's Garden, and raking leaves from the sand in the playground.

Happy New Year

May we be blessed in 2011 with plentiful rain, blooming trees, and visits to the park.