We’ll head back up to north Seattle to Spruce with Lake City Business Alliance along 33rd Ave NE, working on removing weeds, trimming back planting beds, opening up the sidewalks, and readying the area to receive mulch in an upcoming visit. Trash picking will also be a much needed activity in the area.

Dirt Corps reached out to see if our team would be interested in learning best practices for working out in parks and greenspaces. We’ll cover a range of topics starting at the old Admiral Congregational Church, and then walk (or drive) down to College Street Ravine to put this to practical use out in the woods.

Join us on Saturday, August 8 in the Othello neighborhood, we’ll meet at Othello Park and send teams out in all directions to remove litter, spruce up our streets and build community together.

We’ll collaborate with Birds Connect Seattle on a morning bird stroll, along the main trail off the Stevens entrance to the park. We’ll then do some easy ivy pulling up a social trail that Heather has picked out. This will be a fun, easy, and leisurely event. All are welcome to join in on the fun.

I’ll be leading a cleanup for 200+ REI team members at Gas Works Park, and setting them up for a successful event through the park, along the Burke Gilman, and up into the Fremont neighborhood. If any ACA teammates would like to help out or join in, I’d love to have you out, and we can amplify their efforts.

We’ll head up to north Seattle in the coming weeks to collaborate with Lake City Business Alliance on several Sprucing projects they’d like some help with. We’ll start by Sprucing up along 30th Ave NE, working on removing weeds, trimming back planting beds, opening up the sidewalks, and readying the area to receive mulch in an upcoming visit.

On Tuesday we'll head to South Park’s Junction area, one block south of the South Park Bridge. There’s a nice public art park that we’ve worked before, we’ll help kick Lewis off for working the area this coming week. The area actually looks better than in years past, but it could still use some love and there are some problem planting beds.

We’ll be collaborating with Councilmember Saka’s team on Sprucing up the Junction area around Fresh Flours and the neighboring businesses; clearing suckers off of trees, raising canopies, digging out tree wells to receive mulch on upcoming visits, clearing overgrowth along the sidewalks, and of course picking up trash. This will be the start of a weeklong series that Lewis, our Youth Ambassador, will continue on the coming week.

We’ll head back to south Seattle to collaborate with Rainier Beach Action Coalition on Sprucing up a section of the Mapes Trail, just off of South Henderson Street, across from Rainier Beach High School. We’ll be working on removing weeds and readying the area to receive mulch in an upcoming visit.

A friend of ACA has an Afghan family that their church helps support over on Beacon Hill. The parking area around their townhome is overgrown with blackberry and ivy, and littered with trash making parking difficult for the block.

Mary is out this week, but we’ll head back to south Seattle to collaborate with Rainier Beach Action Coalition on Sprucing up a section of South Henderson Street, creating a better sidewalk passage and tidy up the 7 trees and their planting areas to receive mulch when Mary’s back.

Forest Steward Ephraim reached out about some ACA help to clear his forest steward parcel along Longfellow Creek. There’s some legacy trash and dumped materials, but I think we’ll make short work of it. After that we can shift to helping with invasive removal.

We’ll head back to S. Oregon Street End Park which is south of the West Seattle Bridge by a half mile or so. We’ve done some nice Sprucing there over the past year, uncovering a grove of Madronas that are breathing free now and opened up the corner of the park to better visibility. Blackberry, ivy and other invasives still abound as does trash picking opportunities.

Group member Shiloh reached out to ask about a Sprucing of the heavily overgrown sidewalk along the east side of Harbor Ave, down towards the bridge. We’ll hop out Monday and give it an initial cleanup—opening the sidewalk back up for easy passage, cleaning the parking strip, and trimming back the retaining walls on the abandoned properties along the street.

July 5th is typically one of the messiest morning on the beach, and we're anticipating this year will be no different—with lots of garbage, and 4th of July remnants to gather. We’ll help Parks & Rec get a head start on the cleanup with an early morning event and multiple hands will help make shorter work.

We’ll join Lewis, our Youth Ambassador for the Summer, on his first week of Sprucing the Admiral Junction with our third group effort for the week. Lewis will be working on removing suckers from trees, cleaning up tree wells, spreading mulch, sweeping up curb lines, picking up trash, and any other Sprucing activity that will put a shine on the Junction.

We’ll pick up where we left off last week helping Parks & Rec remove a Mustard bloom from the beach, south of Colman Pool. If we tackle that, we’ll continue to pull weeds, blackberry and other invasives off the beach as well. As always, there will also be trash picking opportunities.

We’ll join Lewis, our Youth Ambassador for the Summer, on his first week of Sprucing the Admiral Junction with our second of three group efforts for the week. Lewis will be working on removing suckers from trees, cleaning up tree wells, spreading mulch, sweeping up curb lines, picking up trash, and any other Sprucing activity that will put a shine on the Junction.

Last week we hit the median on Fauntleroy and Genesee and got a ton of great work done, including trimming back most of the street facing edges of the triangle, exposing the sidewalk, and dropping the line-of-sight hazards that were present at all the intersections.

We’ll join Lewis, our Youth Ambassador for the Summer, on his first day of Sprucing the Admiral Junction with one of three group efforts for the week. Lewis will be working on removing suckers from trees, cleaning up tree wells, spreading mulch, sweeping up curb lines, picking up trash, and any other Sprucing activity that will put a shine on the Junction.

Tim at Parks & Rec made a special request for a Sprucing event along the beach at Lincoln Park, right by the Troll and Colman Pool. We’ll work on pulling weeds, blackberry and other invasives. There will also be trash picking opportunities. The area looks much better since we did the massive blackberry pull last Summer, but they continue to pop up.

Join us on Wednesday, June 24 in the Little Saigon neighborhood! We’ll meet at Hoa Mai Park and send teams out in all directions to remove litter, spruce up our streets and build community together. No RSVP required, just show up and pitch in. Stay after for a FIFA World Cup Watch Party in the park!

We’ll head back to the trianglular median at S. Rose and Rainier Ave. S again this SDOT this week, but on Tuesday, due to an All Hands cleanup in Little Saigon on Wednesday. We gave this mini-block a nice initial clean last week, and will continue weeding, scrapping curb lines, and spreading mulch this week—there’ll be lots of trash picking opportunities around the neighborhood as well.

It’s been several years since we hit the median on Fauntleroy and Genesee and I don’t think it’s been touched by the city since. I’ve fielded two inquiries from neighbors about the block in as many weeks, as the pathway through is very overgrown, as-are the curb lines. The planting beds are likewise overtaken by blackberries creating line-of-sight issues for cars and pedestrians.

Join the original Seattle Orca Plungers to raise awareness about increased water pollution in the Southern Resident Killer Whales shared waters. Join us in the water holding a zero-waste SRKW cutout or cheer us on from shore. More than just playing in the water - Impact that Matters. Bring a towel, water shoes, and bag to collect beach trash. A Cleaner Alki will provide the gear for the event.

We'll drop back in along Alki Trail and return to where we first started opening up the tree line 2 years, and 33 visits ago! Since then we’ve helped the Port of Seattle create a brighter, safer, and more welcoming stretch along the bike path.

We’ll have a rare afternoon ivy pulling event at Heather’s Schmitz Park parcel off Spokane St., continuing to remove English ivy and other invasives with a crew from West Seattle Whole Foods. We’ve made great progress here over the past several years with many large-scale ivy pulling events. Please join us if you want to get out into the park.

We’ll head back to Duwamish Waterway Park this week for part of our Spruced series. The past two weeks we’ve made great progress and really started to open up the view from the street approaching the park that is overgrown by blackberry brambles. We opened up a large area that needs root ball extraction, and we can have crews starting to work the perimeter of the cove behind the fence that will be coming down soon.

We’ll head to a new trianglular median at S. Rose and Rainier Ave. S this week, which houses a local bus stop about 1.2 miles south down Rainier where we’ve worked the past several weeks. We’ll give this mini-block a nice initial clean this Wednesday, and see where it leaves us for future visits—there’ll be lots of trash picking opportunities around the neighborhood as well.