February 21, 2016

February has been strange in the weather department for sure.  One day it is snowing and zero and the next day it is 60 degrees.  I have been doing some seed starting with mixed results.  I will need to re-start some of the tomatoes but the peppers came up nicely.  I wonder what this garden season will be like.  One starts out each year with renewed enthusiasm, but the last several years have not been good due to a lot of spring flooding.  We will see what 2016 brings.

On 2-6-16 I went to the Hollywood Blvd Theater in Woodridge to see "The Force Awakens" for the third time with a bunch of members of the Midwest Garrison. We had a private screening at noon.  The Hollywood Blvd theater is an experience in itself. 



There is so much to see in there besides the movie.  Each theater is decorated with a theme from an iconic movie.  The theater we saw TFA in was based on the Wizard of Oz.  Where I do like TFA, I guess I am not as blown away by it as some are. 




I have been doing some workdays for the FPDWC, both public and just going out on small workdays and scouting missions.  On Feb. 14th we had the annual "Dick Wunderlich Memorial Workday" at Lockport Prairie.  It was very well attended and we got a lot done.  It was certainly tedious work as most of the buckthorn addressed was small so it was 3 hours of bending over with a chainsaw getting medium and small whips.

For this workday I always bake carrot cake.  This year I got a heads up that we were going to have a large crowd, so I had to bake two of them.

We will be following up with two workdays in the next couple months for more cutting and a big herbicide blitz of the re-sprouts and seedlings. 

I also went out to Hickory Creek Junction doing a scouting expedition with the steward and we found many, many interesting things from forts being built on FP property to a very busy family of beavers and the results of their tree removal.  Yesterday I went out to HCB with Linda and we did a lot of cutting of autumn olive with hand tools.  My right shoulder is still screaming about that one. 



On 2-18-16 I attended a kick off rally for the New Lenox Relay for life at the request of Sally and Mark Wieclaw.  The Relay will be themed on "Star Wars" this year, so they asked for a few costumed participants. 

I was very grateful to get Laura and Chris to come and I think our presence helped a little with the enthusiasm.  They took a lot of photos of us to use on their Facebook page.  I need to go and find their fundraising page and make a donation too. 

It was a short evening, but I find it difficult to do evening events these days and get up for work the next day.  I was so tired on Friday, but soldiered on. 

I have many, many things on the agenda for the next couple of weeks.  Again, it gets more and more difficult as I find myself with less and less energy.