Tryon on the move to Northern Virginia and Washington DC

I’m in Northern Virginia, visiting some old friends and making some new ones. I got a ride with my friend Sue Bumpous, when she returned to Virginia after she finalized conference details in Raleigh last week. My plan is to visit the offices of NAAEE and see what they do there.

But first, I got to hang out with Elizabeth Burke. Elizabeth is the communications chair for EENC, even though she doesn’t live in North Carolina anymore. She says she still loves meeting with the environmental educators in North Carolina and, having met a few of them, I can see why.

Her main volunteer job in Virginia, is helping to care for native plants at the Earth Sangha Wild Plant Nursery. The nursery collects its seeds from wild stock in parks in Northern Virginia (local ecotype is how they describe it) and then propagate the seeds in their nursery. 

Elizabeth took me to the nursery on her regular Wednesday morning shift, where I met Alison (on the left) and Denise (who is holding me so I can read the words on the sign).

I also got to meet a bunch of garden helpers from  St. John’s Community Services. They come every Wednesday and help with watering, weeding and, when there are seeds to be sown or plants to repot, they fill pots with dirt. Ishmael, one of their counselors, is holding me here, so that I don’t get stepped on.

The nursery operates on a trough system, with one of the troughs dedicated to wetland plants. If you know wetlands, you know all the kinds of critters that are attracted to the water. I saw dragonfly larva, water boatmen, water striders, and lots of green frog and bullfrog tadpoles. There were also a couple of green frogs just hanging out (they kind of hid when my St. John’s friends got too close).

The picture on the right shows a toad road one of the garden helpers made, to help the frogs get out of the water when the time comes for the herps to hibernate. I thought I would give it a try. Seems to be pretty solid.

With all these beautiful plants around, I wanted to get up high so I could see them better. Elizabeth picked me up and let me check out the false sunflowers.  Earth Sangha propagates 200 species of native plants, which make their way back to meadows and riparian buffers.

I’m helping Denise remove the bee straws from the bee condo. Denise has become an expert on native bees and told me that she would donate two of her beautiful bee houses to the Stapp auction: one for the North Carolina basket and one for the Virginia basket.

Speaking of the auction, if you are coming to the conference, I hope you'll bring some auction items. The money raised will go towards scholarships for next year's conference.