Drawdown Tours Revisited

On February 20th John Anfinson and David Wiggins of the National Park Service led several tours of the St. Anthony Pool of the Mississippi River after it had been drawn down 13 feet. If you weren't able to attend a tour, or if you did and want to relive it in a much warmer environment, check out these wonderful videos of the tour, provided by Andrew Busam of the Mill City Museum. The videos are full of beautiful footage, fascinating facts, and river lore, not to mention that seeing all those bundled up folks sure will make you happy it's finally spring!

First Garlic Mustard Pull of the Season

Thanks to everyone who joined us on Sunday afternoon for the Garlic Mustard pull!

An awesome group of 43 people turned out despite the rainy forecast and pulled a LOT of Garlic Mustard. We saw a few signs of spring too! The trees are starting to bud, there's a lot of bird action going on, and there's green peaking out from underneath all of the leaves on the ground as well.

A few of our volunteers took some Garlic Mustard home to test out some of the recipes we had available on site. If you took some home and missed out on the recipes, they can be found on the Mid-Atlantic Exotic Pest Plant Council's website.

Not all of us are fabulous chefs, and you don't have to be to help eat away our invasive species! The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden is partnering with Heartland Restaurant and Lucia's Restaurant and Wine Bar to give the Twin Cities a taste of Garlic Mustard. Throughout the months of April and May, both restaurants are featuring selections on their menus made with Garlic Mustard provided by Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden-- just be sure to call ahead to make sure it's on the menu.

For anybody who missed out (or those of you who made it and had so much fun that you can't wait to do it again), there will be another pull on Wednesday May 21st from 6-8pm. For more information or to register please visit Friends of the Mississippi River's events page.

Photos courtesy of Hillary Oppmann.

Earth Day Clean-up in Numbers

The numbers are in! The 2008 Minneapolis Earth Day Clean-up, which was held on Saturday, April 19th, was a huge success! There were 36 clean-up sites throughout Minneapolis, and 2859 volunteers came out and picked up about 22,500 pounds of trash!

FMR coordinated the site at West River Parkway and East 36th Street, and we had an incredible turnout - 370 volunteers! That's almost twice as many as last year!

The good folks at Peace Coffee provided us with some delicious coffee to start the day off right. Parkway Pizza generously provided a reward for the hard-working volunteers at the end of the event in the form of free pizza. Thank you, thank you, thank you to these wonderful sponsors!

The Minneapolis Rowing Club gave us a big hand by picking up trash bags and large pieces of trash from volunteers at the river so they didn't have to carry them back up the steep hill to the parkway.

We also had a great art activity provided by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Kids (and plenty of adults too!) could make their own butterfly, paint it with watercolors, and add little wire antennae.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this event happen, including MPRB staff, FMR staff and interns, the many sponsors and partners, and most of all, the volunteers!













Photos (except 2 of my own) courtesy of Peter Kastler.

Happy Earth Day!

The bloodroot are up in the gorge! Elizabeth Storey took this photo on Saturday about 200 paces south of the Oak Savanna interpretive sign along the Winchell Trail. I somehow managed to walk right past them without noticing! I was hoping to find some Dutchman's Breeches in bloom, but didn't see any. If anyone sees them, or has any other spring wildflower sightings in the gorge, let us know!

Top 10 Reasons To Come To The Earth Day Cleanup

I'm sure none of you need more of a reason to participate in the city-wide clean-up than celebrating Earth Day or caring for our community gem, the river gorge, but in case you did need a little extra incentive, here you go:

1. The forecast for Saturday is 65 and sunny! It's actually starting to feel like spring, and this is a great way to get out there and enjoy it!
2. A delicious caffeinated kick start will be provided for the early birds by the good folks at Peace Coffee!
3. You can join artists from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in making a miniature painting to honor the Earth! Images of plants and animals from the museum will be on hand for inspiration. Add a wish for the future, along with a postcard stamp to share it with your friends and family afar.
4. Those who stick it out until noon will get to chow on delicious Parkway Pizza!
5. Volunteers from the Minneapolis Rowing Club will be helping us out again this year, so you won't even have to haul your trash bags up the hill - they'll pick them up from you right at the bank of the river.
6. No pre-registration required! You just have to show up!
7. April 19th is the birthday of two FMR employees, and their birthday wish is for a clean river!
8. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board will have a free surprise for each participant. I don't even know what it will be - that's how much of a surprise it is!
9. Everybody is doing it! This year's cleanup has a whopping 36 sites - that's more than ever before!
10. Did I mention that it's an Earth Day celebration??

Let's give this gorge a good spring cleaning!

Spring Events

Spring time to a lot of people says tulips and daffodils, or perhaps baseball, or rain showers. To me, it says garlic mustard, and birding!

• Help remove garlic mustard from the river flats and the oak savanna in the Longfellow neighborhood in the Minneapolis River Gorge on two dates this spring: Sunday, April 27th from 1-3pm, and Wednesday, May 21st from 6-8pm. Garlic mustard is an herbaceous exotic plant invading many River Gorge areas and out-competing native spring plant species.
• There's still room available on a couple of our popular birding hikes in May! On Saturday, May 3rd from 8-9:30am, FMR is partnering with the Ramsey County Bird Festival on a birding hike at Crosby Farm Regional Park. No registration is required for this hike. FMR's own Land Conservation Director Tom Lewanski and Hastings Park Superintendent Kevin Smith will lead participants on a birding hike at Old Mill Park in Hastings on Saturday, May 10th from 7-9am .
• Also on Saturday, May 10th, from 10-11:30am, hydro-geologist Craig Larson and National Park Ranger Lyndon Torstenson will guide a geology hike through the river gorge in the Seward and Longfellow neighborhoods of Minneapolis to explore how this beautiful wonder, the only true gorge on the entire length of the Mississippi River, was formed.

For more details or registration information for these events, see our Events & Activities page on the FMR website, or contact sue rich at 651-222-2193.

Winter Watershed Workshop: Recap

With the snowflakes flying yet again today, it seems an appropriate time to do a recap of our recent workshop: Winter home and watershed care: Tending your house, yard, and river.

About thirty citizens gathered on an almost spring-like evening at St. Paul's Saint Anthony Park Library to discuss the environmental impacts of snow and ice removal, as well as plan for watershed-friendly lawncare with native plants, rain gardens, composters, and more.

Katie Schonhorst and Connie Fortin of Fortin Consulting, Inc. explained the variety of products and chemicals used to remove snow and ice, and the environmental impacts of each. They then offered tips for the least harmful ways to deal with snow and ice.

If you weren't able to make the workshop, or were there but want some refreshers, here are some resources on the information they covered:

• The MWMO's educational page on winter snow removal for homeowners
• Info on different types of deicers
• Environmental impacts of road salt and salt alternatives
• Effects of road salt on groundwater

Then we started thinking spring! We talked about a variety of things homeowners can do in their yard and garden to protect water quality, including lawncare, rain gardens, rain barrels, native plants, composting, and more.
Some great resources covering these topics include:

• Wisconsin DNR's Rain Gardens - A how-to manual for homeowners (PDF)
• The Blue Thumb program, and particularly their Plant Selector
• Reduce.org's page on lawns and gardens, which includes info on composting, fertilizer and pesticide use, mowing, and landscaping
  

Thanks again to the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization and the City of St. Paul's Department of Public Works for making this workshop possible!


Photo courtesy of Katie Schonhorst, Fortin Consulting, Inc.