September brought with it a fortuitous connection - a new friend, Chrestecia – whom I met while out walking our dog Penny. Chrestecia (who was also walking her Shiba Inu) and I walked through our community park, discussing the challenge of battling this invasive Morning Glory weed, which has come back with a vengeance.Amy and I are frustrated that it seems like the work we first did as a group in July to clean the park was erased, but this won’t stop us from going back as a group in October. The way we see it, it’s actually a prime opportunity for teamwork, because we can’t do this all ourselves.
Fortunately, it seems that this month, we were being a clearing for collaboration. As it turns out, when I met Chrestecia, she had been looking for a capstone project for her environmental engineering degree.
She brings her interest in testing and measuring data to our project, giving us another lens into the efficiency of the plaza as a water filtration system. The GRI (standing for green rainwater infrastructure) plaza is designed to filter the dirty water from the street so that clean water can flow back into our stream systems and water supply.
Chrestecia – our newest team member – made a great point. She said to me, “You can’t do this yoursef… this warrants more people.” Amy an I feel optimistic about our park because of people like Chrestecia, whose first question to me was, “I want to contribute; how can I be a part of this?”
Meanwhile, Amy has been in action creating and sending flyers to schools that invite students to design a little library for the plaza. We had the idea to create a competition between local high school students to submit their design for the little library. Fortunately, our grant offers us the ability to sponsor all of the materials they’ll need to do the project.
I am also exploring a piano for the park. While we don’t yet know the feasibility of this, it’s worth looking into given that our intention is to encourage more people to stop by and learn more about the plaza, and at the same time bring people together in our community.
[pictured here: Amy and our dog Penny]
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