Between Saturday’s Charles River Cleanup and the work by the Newton Tree Conservancy and Newton Serves on Sunday, our city has had a major facelift.
If you volunteered for one of these projects this weekend, go to the comments section and tell us about it.
Also, if you took any photos send one or two to me at [email protected] and I’ll try and post it.
Mt Ida football teaM
We had 19 people clearing out vegetation and trash (and a couch) from the future Upper Falls Greenway one mile railroad track. With all of the vegetation trimmed back, the entire trail should now be usable through the summer while we wait for the tracks to be removed and the new park to be built in October,
Up the street at Circuit Ave, Alderman Deb Crossley had six or eight people sprucing up the Barney and Martin Conservation areas. In addition to garden variety trash, they hauled out all sorts of other interesting flotsam and jetsam – including a small engine, some 1950’s era electronics, a rug, and a working kids scooter. They also did a bit of archaeology and uncovered a short stretch of sidewalk that no one knew was there.
Best part of course was the free Cabots ice cream sundaes at City Hall late this afternoon.
First, Greg, thanks for your contribution to the Hemlock Gorge cleanup. You picked a bag and a milk carton full of trash. The milk carton was unique in my memory. The fluid containers tend to go toward shot bottles and metal cans. But at least the alcohol fans are getting neater.
One group (I assume it was a group) left (a trash bag full of cans and plastic cups that were easy to sort into recyclables and trash. We had about 20 adults and 2 children who collected about twenty bags of trash If the photographer who took the above picture of the Hemlock Gorge Cleanup were at the same spot about an hour later, it could have gotten a great vista of half a dozen grownups working in the woods while two mothers with their sons and a dog named Otis played at the river’s edge. This bodes well for the future as little kids both enjoy the gorge as see their parents working to improve it.
The afternoon Newton Serves cleanup at the South Burying Ground the following day was very productive as volunteers collected massive amounts of dead wood, smaller amounts of trash much of it from the edges, leaves and pine cones. and replaced the flags that had been blown down on top of the graves of the Revolutionary War veterans including my great great
great grandfather Samuel Richardson. The only sour note was that a portion of the fence between the site and the National Lumber parking lot had been knocked over with trash collecting on both sides and a thicket of invasive vines had developed inside.