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This week in Glen Canyon: Planting flowering current, California rose and juncas

December 18, 2012 by Elizabeth Weise

Raccoon tracks within inches of Glen Canyon's Islais Creek, indicate this canyon critter was thirsty! Photo taken on December 12, 2012.
Raccoon tracks within inches of Glen Canyon’s Islais Creek, indicate this canyon critter was thirsty! Photo taken on December 12, 2012.

By Murray Schneider

On December 12 six Friends of Glen Canyon Park volunteers turned their green thumbs to planting dozens of California native plants along Islais Creek as the creek, swollen after days of rain, disappeared into a culvert destined to empty into the Bay not far from AT&T Park.

The volunteers worked at the Levi site, so named because the Levi Strauss Company donated money to purchase scores of native plants, which the Recreation and Park Department’s Natural Areas Program believe have a salutary impact on the canyon’s natural habitat.

“Besides beautifying the area,” said Connie Chan, Rec and Park’s Deputy Director of Public Affairs, “the flowering currents and other native species help control erosion and provides important foraging habitat and shelter for canyon critters.”

As if on cue, Steve Uchida, a retired postal worker who lives on Monterey Boulevard, put aside a Lady Fern and walked to the creek’s edge. Kneeling, he scanned a set of fresh animal footprints, which inched their way along the moving stream. A moment before a NAP manager indicated the prints belonged to a raccoon. The footprints angled along the creek bed, making imprints in the muddy ground while the water continued running only centimeters away. Clearly, the raccoon had quenched its thirst before dawn.

Friends of Glen Canyon Park Steven Uchida planting California native plants along Islais Creek on December 12, 2012.
Friends of Glen Canyon Park Steven Uchida planting California native plants along Islais Creek on December 12, 2012.

The volunteers continued planting flowering current, California rose and juncas on both sides of a concrete dam, recently repaired under NAP supervision. The asphalt dam had been crumbling and only recently had been put to rights. Now strengthened, it stopped sediment. It had been fashioned with drainage holes allowing ribbons of water to weep through the construction material.

“The sediment basin needed repair. It wasn’t functioning as designed,” said Connie Chan, charged with the role of putting a public face on the Natural Areas Program, whose mission is to protect the biodiversity of 32-natural open spaces in the City.  “As a result, sediment built up at the entrance to the storm system culvert.”

“It’s important to prevent the storm system from overflowing,” Chan continued,  “Otherwise the sediment from the creek ends up in the Bay.”

The volunteers continued working, digging 18-inch long holes with trowels, shovels and mattocks. Closer to the creek, the mud morphed into suction cups of dark goo and sucked at their boots and sneakers in messy globules.

“We’ll place the twinberry up there,” said Jenny Sotelo, a NAP manager, pointing up the slope that dead ended at Alms Road and was protected by orange plastic fencing. Two volunteers navigated the incline, dodging green flags, careful not to disturb earlier plantings. Twinberry is a magnet for pollinators such as butterflies and is thus highly prized by the NAP.

First-time Friends of Glen Canyon Park volunteer Zack Clark planting California native plants along Islais Creek on December 12, 2012.
First-time Friends of Glen Canyon Park volunteer Zack Clark planting California native plants along Islais Creek on December 12, 2012.

Kay Westerberg, a retired San Francisco Unified School District teacher who lives on Chenery Street, accompanied her son Zack Clark, a first-time volunteer. Zack held an oblong green canister, massaging a juncas plant from it before gingerly placing it in the hole he’d just dug. After he positioned the spaghetti-tangled rush, he shoveled the soggy soil back into the earthen cavity, careful not to upset the plant’s delicate root system. He patted the ooze with rubber-gloved hands. Zack just graduated from Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in Appleton, Wisconsin. He plans to volunteer as a tutor at Balboa High School while looking for a job. Zack, an English literature major, joined his mother for a morning of Natural Areas Program Horticulture 101.

Jean Conner (standing) and Kay Westerberg (kneeling) planting California native plants along Islais Creek on December 12, 2012.
Jean Conner (standing) and Kay Westerberg (kneeling) planting California native plants along Islais Creek on December 12, 2012.

Jenny Sotelo surveyed the efforts, paying particular attention to compromised fencing and the network of paralleling coirs that descended to the creek. The organic coirs looked like enlarged bedrolls, the sort of bedrolls Wyoming or Montana cowpokes tie behind their saddles when they herd cattle on open range.

Rolls of brown coir, extracted from coconut husks, are used by the Natural Areas Program for erosion control and can be commonly seen along California riverbanks and hillsides. The NAP, practitioners of integrated pest management, recommends coir since earth-friendly coir is free of fungal spores and produces results without environmental degradation, useful in the Levi site in deterring snails from introduced plantings.

“We don’t want this area to become denuded,” Sotelo said. “And it shouldn’t be a social trail either.”

The volunteers began to trickle back to Alms Road, straddling a segment of sagging fencing. A volunteer tugged at crinkled green flags that signaled previous plantings, now healthy and thriving with abundant monkey flower. He tossed the flags in an ash can beneath a giant eucalyptus tree that annually houses a nesting mother Great Horned Owl.

With a little less than an hour to go before the weekly work party ended, the group fanned out along Alms Road, needing little direction from its NAP supervisors as to what needed to be done next.

Mary Huiznga, who lives on Laidley Street, searched out tendrils of Cape ivy and stalks of Himalayan blackberry and was soon swallowed among Arroyo willow that jigsawed along the fire path. Shortly, Jean Conner, who lives on Sussex Street, joined her and was also lost to sight in a labyrinth of lichen-crusted branches that circled back toward the creek.

Kay Westerberg and her son walked by Glenridge Co-op Nursery School and then up and along the canyon’s eastern slope, searching for radish to unearth, while Steve Uchida scaled the narrow path above the road, occasionally making way for dog walkers, and looked for early infestations of thistle. Crags of chert shadowed him and he, too, was soon lost to view.

An hour passed before the volunteers reassembled and returned their tools to the Rec and Park truck’s flatbed.

“We found some mustard,” said Kay Westerberg.

An experienced crew that had been there and done that and had long worked well with one another nodded knowingly. Westerberg’s declaration spelled plenty of spring- time weeding.

The group began to disband after sampling snacks of cookies and water.

Uchida headed up the hill toward the Sussex Street steps; Conner and Huizinga strolled past the Rec Center gym and turned right on Elk Street.

Tall and angular, Zack Clark placed an affectionate hand on his mother’s shoulder. They walked together along Alms Road, soon to be altered now that the Glen Canyon Renovation Project faces one last eleventh hour appeal, then past where two diseased Monterey Pines fell on October 1.

The long awaited community-based project, which envisions a sculpted park entrance with a walkway replete with new trees and additional California native plants will mean plenty of future work for the Friends of Glen Canyon Park, possibly even for neophyte Zack Clark. He’d be welcomed back to his neighborhood’s 70-acre green house for a graduate seminar in the finer points of riparian native plant and shrub ecology.

If neighbors would like to volunteer in Glen Canyon Park, they can contact Natural Areas Program volunteer coordinator Joe Grey at joe.grey@sfgov.org (415-831-6328) or Jean Conner of Friends of Glen Canyon Park at 415-584-8576

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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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.


2025 Glen Park Night Market poster


 


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
Sign up here

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Glen Park Association is at Glen Park Greenway.
2 days 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.
6 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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