So much accomplished today!

Our volunteer day went on a bit longer than expected, but Emily, Matt and I were joined by Nate and Tanya - we always get lots done when they are around.

We started with weeding the Mariposa Center Garden. Emily took Nate and Tanya down there and they stripped out every weed there. Later on Emily planted an Eriogonum and an Arctostaphylos uva-ursi 'Alba', as well as several sweet peas which will enjoy climbing up the fence there all winter, and some clumps of Chasmanthe too.

In the meantime, Matt and I cleared plants off the back slope in preparation for terracing that area to make it accessible. Lots of Agave americanas removed (we really have too many...) as well as columnar cactus and Crassula ovata.

You can see the before pic above (after to come) - we'll eventually have two terraces and three gravel paths in that area, so people can walk back there and see what we plant.

Finally, after an Arum-supplied drinks-and-cakes break, Nate, Tanya and I redid the small brick path. I thought this would be a short job but it ended up taking a couple hours... first Nate and Tanya removed all the bricks. Then we leveled the area carefully, removing lots of stones and dirt. Then we started replacing the bricks.

After realizing we couldn't mine sand from the back area due to our regular sand pit being filled in last week, Matt went down and bought three bags of sand from Center Hardware. we spread that out and relaid the bricks. It really looks good! Thanks for sticking out that project to the end, guys.