Lower Nehalem Community Trust Events

Lower Nehalem Community Trust e-Bulletin
May 1, 2008
News and Upcoming Events

Events

Living Locally Event, June 13, 2009 – 6:00-8:30 pm
Mark your calendars for the Trust’s second annual Living Locally fundraising event. This year the event will feature a light buffet dinner and silent auction. This is the perfect opportunity to introduce your friends and neighbors to the work of the Trust and enjoy an evening of wonderful local food, catered by Bread and Ocean, sustainable Oregon wines, the musical talents of guitar duo Bob Brook and Paul Miller, and great conversation with others who love the Nehalem Valley and Neahkahnie region. Tickets to the Living Locally event are $25 a piece and can be purchased after May 4 through Erich Miller at the LNCT office (contact him at 503-368-3203, or lnct@nehalemtel.net) or from the LNCT Board Members.

The Trust seeks your small, unique items for out silent auction tables at the Living Locally fundraising event. Suggested items include jewelry, ceramics, table-top décor, or that novel conversation piece. It’s an easy way to donate to the Trust and make room in your life for something new. Please call 503-368-3203 to discuss your potential auction donation for fit and arrange for pick up or delivery. Thank you for your support.

Down by the Riverside, May 11, 2009
The second annual North County Down by the Riverside educational event will be happening Monday May 11th. Down by the Riverside is an education event sponsored by SOLV and managed by the Tillamook Estuaries Partnership. This year, third graders from Nehalem and Garibaldi Elementary Schools will learn about invasive species, riparian zone insect and wild life and will assistant in building the Nehalem native plant teaching trail.

How You Can Help

Vosburg Creek Work Party, May 2, 2009 - 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
The first Saturday work party for May will be held on the 2nd from 10:00-2:00 at LNCT’s Vosberg Creek property. Tasks will include removal and suppression of blackberries, ivy, weeding and re-caging recently planted trees; ongoing clean-up of debris; and minor maintenance of the buildings on the property. For the first year, Scotch Broom (see Nature Notes below) has invaded Vosberg Creek and it is particularly important that we remove the young plants before they establish a real foothold on this property. Bring boots appropriate for working in a wet lowland area and a dish to share for the potluck lunch. Vosburg Creek is located at the corner of Highway 101 and Dubois St. on the southwest edge of Wheeler.

Wish List
- An 20 inch or greater flat-screen LCD Monitor for a second office computer we recently received.
- Transportation for 2 fifty-gallon drums collected during the March estuary clean-up to Metro hazardous waste disposal centers, in St John’s or Oregon City
- Old Cedar Posts – for extending our split rail fence
- 200 feet of plastic coated laundry line &
- 8’ cedar fence posts for trellising raspberries
- A Cat door
- 4’-6’ shop lights
- A metal dust pan
- A power grinder/sharpener – for sharpening tools
- 6’ metal T-posts – can be rusty but not bent
- Rolls or partial rolls of 4’ woven wire fencing

For more info about volunteer opportunities or to donate goods from our wish list contact the Trust at (503) 368-3203 or LNCT@nehalemtel.net.

News

New Office Hours
LNCT office hours will be expanded to 7:30 – 12:30, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and Tuesdays 12:30-3:30 through the end of June. Please stop in or give us a call during those hours with questions about events, Living Locally tickets, wish list donations or any other Trust related matters.

Nature Notes

Controlling the Scotch Bloom Scourge
One of the areas, most unwanted invasive plants, the evergreen shoots and yellow blooms of the Scotch or Scot’s Broom (scientific name cytisus scoparius) are an unfortunately common sight all over the Nehalem Valley and Neahkahnie area, as well as the rest of the Pacific Northwest. There are several competing stories about how the Scotch Broom arrived in the region, my favorite one indicates that it was used as packing material for Scotch whiskey sent to gold mining camps in the 1860s, but regardless of how it got here it has since established a firm foothold. Scotch Broom, which grows up to as high as 12 feet or more, forms dense stands crowding out native trees and plants and displacing wildlife which uses these native flora for food and habitat. After reaching an age of three years, each plant can produce between 10,000-18,000 seeds a year and each seed can remain viable for as long as 60 years. Scotch Broom, like all legumes, is nitrogen fixing allowing the plants to sustain themselves in sand and nutrient-poor soils particularly in recently disturbed areas such as clear-cuts.

Managing the spread of the Scotch Broom is difficult, however very young plants can be pulled easily making monitoring and early intervention critical. Non-chemical removal methods of more mature plants are limited to manual cutting during the mid summer months, after flowering but prior to the maturation of the seed pods when the plant is stressed from the summer drought. Cutting is most effective on the oldest plants, with only 20% of plants aged more than 5 years re-sprouting. While the roots of the plant can be removed at the same time, experts recommend removing the roots only in the winter months as the soil disturbance provides ideal conditions for germination of dormant Scotch Broom seeds in the soil. Scotch Broom debris can be chipped or burned if it doesn’t contain seeds, otherwise it should be left to decompose on site to minimize its spread. Scotch Broom seeds can hitch rides on boots and shovels, so be sure to clean your gear well after working in an infested area.



If a friend forwarded this e-Bulletin to you and you would like to subscribe, please email lnct@nehalemtel.net with “Subscribe” in the subject line and your first and last name in the body. To unsubscribe, simply reply to this email with “Unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Lower Nehalem Community Trust • Phone: (503) 368-3203 • Email: LNCT@nehalemtel.net
Address: PO Box 496 Manzanita, OR 97130