Dear Greenbelt Guardians,

This is an active season for taking care of our much loved Barton Creek Greenbelt! After a very successful work day on February 7 at the Homedale Trail, we are gearing up for another big work day on March 7 to participate in the citywide It’s My Park Day event, organized by the Austin Parks Foundation.

We invite you to come out to work on one of our adopted trails, Homedale or Gus Fruh, from 9:00 – 1:00 on Saturday, March 7. As always, we have plenty to do: invasive plant removal, trail maintenance and repair, rock wall & step construction, weeding and pruning along the trailside, trash pick-up, and other miscellaneous projects.

Please sign up to register through the Austin Parks Foundation website. They are providing the master coordination for this event, as well as free tee-shirts and snacks, and other support materials.

To register, do the following:
Go to: http://www.austinparks.org and select the It’s My Park Day page. You will see a full list of more than 50 projects around town. Scroll down until you see the projects titled Barton Creek Greenbelt – Homedale Trail w/ Greenbelt Guardians and Barton Creek Greenbelt – Gus Fruh Trail w/Greenbelt Guardians. Select which one of these trails you want to work on.

If you are an individual signing up, just fill in your name along with all of the information fields including your tee-shirt size.

If you are signing up for a group, fill in your name and the total number of volunteers you expect in your group. In the tee-shirt column, put an “X”, and then in the Notes column, fill in how many of each tee-shirt size will be needed for your group.

As a double check on the registration, you can also RSVP to this email.

We look forward to another productive and enjoyable work day on the greenbelt. As always, thanks for your support!

Glee Ingram, gleeful@earthlink.net
Stan Ostrum, sostrum@austin.rr.com
Greenbelt Guardian Coordinators

Hello Greenbelt Fans,

The BHNA Greenbelt Guardians are planning our first work day in 2009. We will be working at the Homedale Trail, 2010 Homedale, on Saturday, February 7, from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm.

We’ve got lots to do. Due to a water leak from a city water main, a whole new crop of Ligustrum plants have sprouted in the drainage creek near the entry. We have also gotten permission to remove the very large seeding Ligustrum trees next to the trail entry. We’ll be expanding the windrows on both sides of the drainage creek with the large trunks and branches.

We will be regrading the entry trail to improve drainage and prevent erosion, and packing it with roadbase. This is the first step toward a more long-lasting renovation, which will culminate in covering the trail with decomposed granite mixed with a polymer mix, like we did on the Gus Fruh trail.

We’ve got some trees that were donated by Keep Austin Beautiful that we will be planting across from the entry kiosks, to fill in the old Ligustrum-filled area that we cleared years ago.

We’ll be improving the appearance of the entry by painting the entry posts and cleaning up the kiosks, and weed-eating the overgrowth on both sides of the entry trail. And, as always, we’ll be picking up trash along the trailsides and the creek bed.

We are excited to begin our sixth year of work on the greenbelt. We’re hoping to have a good showing of volunteers for a fun and productive work day. Please RSVP so we will have plenty of breakfast tacos and tools to support you in your work. Thanks!

Glee Ingram
Greenbelt Guardian Coordinator
(512) 443-7522
gleeful@earthlink.net