SEPTEMBER  |  OCTOBER 2014   
  


In This Issue (Links)
Call for Field Trip Docents
Friend of the Month
My Summer with FOSC
Tales from the Oak Saver
Coyote Brush
Kudos Korner
Events of Others






Upcoming Events
For locations, see event calendar
FOSC NATIVE PLANT SALE & OPEN HOUSE
   
Sun., Oct. 19
10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Joaquin Miller Park Native Plant Nursery
See flyer for directions


MEMBER MEETINGS
Butterfly 101 talk by Liam O'Brien
Wed., Sept. 17
7-9 p.m.
Dimond Branch Library

Raptors, Rats, and Riparian Areas
by Lisa Owens Viani
Wed., Nov. 19
7-9 p.m.
Dimond Branch Library

 

 SHORELINE CLEANUPS


Fruitvale Bridge Park

 Sat., Sept. 20

8-11 a.m.  

 

Jingletown Arts Community

400 Derby Ave., Oakland

Sat., Sept. 20

9 a.m.-noon

 

 

RESTORATION WORKDAYS 

 

Barry Place 

Sat., Sept. 20

9 a.m.-noon

 

Beaconsfield Canyon

Sat., Sept. 20, Oct. 25 

9 a.m.-noon

  

Bridgeview Trail Ivy Removal 

Sun., Sept. 14, Oct. 12 

10 a.m.-noon

 

Bridgeview Trail Workday

Sat., Sept. 20

9 a.m.-noon 

 

Bridgeview Trailhead Native Bee Garden

Sun., Sept. 21, Oct. 19 

10 a.m.-noon


Marj Saunders Park

Sat., Sept. 20

9 a.m.-noon

Mon., Oct. 6 

11 a.m.-1 p.m.

   

Montclair Railroad Trail

Sat., Sept. 20, Oct. 18  

9-11 a.m. 

  

Wood Park

Sat., Sept. 20, Oct. 18 

10 a.m.-noon

 

 

 NURSERY WORKDAYS

Joaquin Miller Park Native Plant Nursery

 

 Sat., Sept. 13 & 27,

Oct. 11 & 25  

1:30-4:30 p.m.

 

Sat., Sept. 20

9 a.m.-noon 

 

Fri., Oct. 17

10 a.m.-3 p.m. 

 

Sat., Oct. 18

10 a.m.-3 p.m. 

   

 

COLLECTION HIKES

See event calendar for location

or join the seed hike Google Group

 

Thurs., Sept. 11

10 a.m.-noon 

       

 

MONITORING

 

Aquatic Insect Monitoring  (email Kathleen for location)

Sun., Sept. 7, Oct. 5

9 a.m.-noon

Bird Monitoring (starts at Sequoia Arena)
Sat., Oct. 25
8:30 a.m-12:30 p.m.


BOARD MEETING

Wed., Oct. 8
7-9 p.m.
Park Blvd. Presbyterian Church
 

 

    

 

For more information:

Event Calendar 

 

Michelle Krieg 

Restoration & Nursery Manager

(510) 325-9006

 

 Kimra McAfee 

Executive Director

(510) 501-3672

 







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Photo Credits:

 BonTerra Consulting
Margaret Bratt
Michelle Krieg
Liam O'Brien
Karen Paulsell
Randy Smith
Tim Vendlinski 

 

 

Editors: 

Richard Kauffman 

Kimra McAfee

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

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FOSC logo
Thank you to the 63 donors who generously made mid-year donations to reach our $5,000 goal, enabling FOSC to receive the full $5,000 match. Summer was quite busy with the summer intern program, but fall is even more demanding as our staff prepares for our largest workday of the year (Creek to Bay Day) and the annual native plant sale and nursery open house, plus field trips are resuming with the start of the school year. Because of your support, we will again have the help of a paid intern, and we can buy the field supplies we need for all these programs. We look forward to seeing you in the 'shed at these fantastic fall events.

Butterfly 101
Wednesday, September 17, 7 p.m.
Dimond Library, 3565 Fruitvale Ave.
Lepidopterist Liam O'Brien will remove some of the mystery and overwhelm of butterfly identification. All five families of butterflies will be covered as well as the all-important host plants (the ones butterflies lay their eggs on) that you might want to add to your garden. There will be lots of beautiful pictures along with valuable information about how our species relates to theirs. Download a flyer.

Creek to Bay Day
Saturday, September 20
9 a.m.-noon
Join Oakland's annual volunteer creek cleanup and restoration event, which is held in conjunction with International Coastal Cleanup Day. FOSC has work sites from the hills to the estuary. See our event calendar for details, or see www.oaklandcreektobay.org for citywide project locations. We need a few more crew leaders at Dimond Park; please contact Michelle if you can help.

Native Plant Sale and Open House
Sunday, October 19, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Joaquin Miller Park Native Plant Nursery
Fabulous native plants, raptors, live music--we love hosting this family-friendly event! See the flyer for the lineup. The list of available plants will be on our website soon. Last year we propagated and planted nearly 4,000 plants at restoration sites in the watershed. Your purchases, and your donations, make this incredible work possible. We open our nursery to the public only once a year! Don't miss this chance to stock up on native plants for your garden. 
Call for Field Trip Docents  

As we prepare for field trips this upcoming school year, we'd like to ask you--the FOSC community--for help. With larger classes, we have found that splitting students into smaller groups allows for greater understanding and learning support. We'd like to establish a group of docents who can help our staff lead field trip groups, improving the quality of the experience. If you are interested in serving as a volunteer docent, please contact Michelle at field@sausalcreek.org. Tell her if you've had any teaching experience, topic interests, availability, and preferred field trip age. Thank you!

Read more about our field trip programs ... 

Friend of the Month: Nancy Jones 

 

Before there was a FOSC native plant nursery in Joaquin Miller Park, there was FOSC Volunteer Nancy Jones. Nancy has witnessed several transitions of nursery managers, helping each one learn the ropes, smiling and generously sharing her wealth of institutional knowledge--where and when to collect specific seeds and cuttings, the secrets of the irrigation system, the glorious existence of a goat grazing plan, and so much more. The past year has been such a transition year. Throughout, Nancy has been a tremendous support to Restoration and Nursery Manager Michelle Krieg, volunteering regularly for nursery programs and seed hikes and working behind the scenes on the nursery committee.

So Nancy, a standing ovation to you for helping to make our nursery what it is today--the envy of restoration groups throughout the Bay Area--and for supporting our staff, for teaching hundreds of volunteers, and for tenderly caring for thousands of baby native plants. The fruits of your efforts can be found throughout the watershed, as well as in the home gardens of nearly a decade of plant sale customers. Thank you, Nancy!
My Summer with FOSC

--Emily Kim, 2014 FOSC High School Intern 

 

Teachers, parents, and kids usually associate summer with lost brain cells. However my summer was quite the opposite. My cells grew, and in the best way too--in the outdoors, absorbing my knowledge from hands-on experience as well as discussion. I never knew that so much information was stored throughout my own neighborhood, down to the last madrone seed or the chirp of a cedar waxwing.

Read more ... 
From River City to Oaktown: Tales from the Oak Saver

--Tim Vendlinski, site adopter for three Park Blvd. plots

To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, "There are no oaks there." 

 

Not in Oakland, not anywhere. We've done our best to erase this iconic tree from the California landscape that it defined. Millions of oaks were cleared to make way for Western civilization. And today, when a wayward sprout seats itself in an untended lot or the margin of a yard, it is typically pulled, poisoned, or shredded by the whirring filament of a weed whacker.

Read more ...

 

Ready to adopt a spot of your own? Go to FOSC's site adoption page to find out how.

Explore the Watershed
Late Bloomer

 

Common Name: Coyote brush

Scientific Name: Baccharis pilularis 


As we near the end of summer, many plants around the watershed have already flowered and produced seed. Coyote brush is an exception to this rule--blooming from August to November. A prolific shrub found just about anywhere it can find a spot of sunshine, it provides habitat for native wildlife, nectar for butterflies, and a home for a variety of insects. Coyote brush is dioecious, meaning there are distinct male and female plants. This time of year you can tell the male and female plants apart: The female plants produce whitish green flowers that develop into fluffy seeds. If you see a large shrub that looks like it has grown a coat of fur, it is likely coyote brush!

Kudos Korner

Our 2010 Friend of the Year Jeff Chilcott has been volunteering overtime of late: He expanded our shade house irrigation, reconfigured our greenhouse irrigation to better fit our needs, and troubleshot an issue with our irrigation controllers. Thank you so much, Jeff!

We are grateful to Tiffany Trinh (FOSC 2013 high school summer intern) for painting our wonderful new nursery greeting sign that welcomes volunteers to nursery workdays and lets park users who wander by know what's going on inside the fence.

A bushel of appreciation to Emil Friend of I Love Your Garden for purchasing new, 25-cell collars for our D16 pots. These collars will save the backs of our nursery volunteers and manager (our collars had previously held 50 pots), and they fit better on our nursery benches.

Thank you to Montclair Baking for providing goodies for Beaconsfield Canyon's monthly workdays. Yum!  
Events of Others

Every Monday at 8 a.m. and Saturday at 9 a.m. you can help spruce up Dimond Park (thus keeping the trash out of Sausal Creek!) by helping on the Dimond Litter Walks. Sticks, bags, and gloves are provided. Meet at the litter container outside of the tennis courts at Fruitvale and Lyman. Contact Marion Mills, NCPC 22X Beautification Committee, at marionadelemills@gmail.com for more information.

Catch the Bay Currents talk series presented by Friends of Five Creeks. Professor David Sedlak will speak on The Coming Revolution in Urban Water on Tuesday, September 9 at 7 p.m. Kathleen M. Wong and Ariel Rubissow Okamoto will present Extreme Adaptation on Tuesday, October 14 at 7 p.m.

Find out the results of last May's 2014 East Bay Sudden Oak Death (SOD) Blitz on Monday, September 22 at 7 p.m. at UC Berkeley. Attend an Oak Health 101 Workshop on Saturday, October 4 at 10 a.m. at Garber Park.

Visit FOSC's table while reveling at the annual Dimond Oaktoberfest on Saturday, October 4, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

Get support for going native in your garden by attending Bringing Back the Natives fall workshops and Gardeners, Unite! home meetings. 

To subscribe to this e-newsletter, email
or call (510) 501-3672.

DONATION
Please help us maintain and expand our efforts in the Sausal Creek Watershed by making a donation today!

Donate online via PayPal or Network for Good or mail this form with your check made payable to:
Friends of Sausal Creek, P.O. Box 2737, Oakland, CA 94602
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