Today was Newton SERVES day, one of the best traditions in the city. It’s an annual day of volunteer service for the citizens to pitch in on any of dozens of citizen organized projects all over the city. The city pitches in with various supports services, hauling trash, providing supplies, etc but the citizens do the heavy lifting.
In my neighborhood a crew hauled bags and bags of trash out of the Upper Falls Greenway right of way. Just down the river, a team of mostly Boy Scouts repaired two of the footbridges along the Quinnobequin road riverside paths.
Tell us your NewtonSERVES stories. Did you see any projects in your neighborhood? Were you volunteering on a project yourself?
The work is all over, so now its time for the best part – a free ice cream Sunday down at City Hall courtesy of Cabots Ice Cream.
I am too old and feeble to actually provide meaningful assistance to the hardy folks out there slaving away but I happened to see a crew at work over at Wellington Park, which is a small but totally charming neighborhood park over off Henshaw St in West Newton (I think that’s the correct village). It was fun to see some of the younger kids perhaps 3 to 5, with their own little rakes and such, pitching in along with the adults. One little toddler, maybe 2, was very determined, dragging a chunk of a dead branch that was a little bigger than he was, across the field to the refuse pile.
I picked up trash from Hemlock Gorge Saturday morning, from the Upper Falls Greenway Sunday morning, and from the Historic South Burying Ground Sunday afternoon. While I was *really* glad to finally get home, clean up, and put my feet up, I probably had a better time picking cigarette butts, styrofoam cups, and beer bottles out of the brush than I would have had watching the Sox play the Orioles Sunday afternoon …
@JenAK – After that volunteer trifecta you deserve to put your feet up.
My 5 year old and I helped with yard cleanup at the Auburndale Community Library with some friends. The kids loved weeding and cleaning up the dead branches!
I sat out this year due to a lingering post-winter-snow-removal injury, which meant that I watched that Red Sox game. The whole miserable thing. Made me wish I was spreading mulch at Burr as in past years…
Glad to see a team from The Village Bank helping at the Auburndale Community Library and also painting classrooms at Newton North!
I can vouch for two-thirds of Jen’s activities this weekend. She was the first person to arrive for the clean-up of Hemlock Gorge and was very active and productive at South Burial Ground Sunday afternoon. I can’t vouch directly for her work Sunday morning on the Upper Falls Greenway, but I walked home from the Burial Ground on the Greenway and found the bags of trash as she described them. She’s an excellent citizen activist who attends the meetings of the Upper Falls Neighborhood Area Council though she’s not a member and frequently offers thoughtful comments.
(The wooden ties are still there on the Greenway, but with Upper Falls included in a new CDBG target area and $80,000 needed to finish the job, we should have the Greenway finished by the end of the year with any luck and cooperation from the appropriate government agencies .)
Alderman Brian Yates
President, Friends of Hemlock Gorge
Member, Historic Burial Grounds Committee, Historic Newton
(Harry Lohr and the members of his committee, including Jen, did a great job on this site and I assume the others as well, but the fence at the end needs very much to be replaced. Are there any fence philanthropists reading Village 14?)
Jen and I worked together on Saturday’s Hemlock Gorge cleanup. Brian is right. She’s a great citizen and a gem of a human being.
Wow. Clearly Jen is amazing. Perhaps a run for Ward 5 At Large City Council is in order? Can she count on your endorsement Alderman Yates?
Yes, there’s pretty much nothing that happens in Upper Falls that Jen isn’t actively involved in and helping out with … and she’s a very good story teller.
I did not help at hemlock gorge. I did not watch the Red Sox game. I served at Cold Spring Park, which started out pruning and ended up yanking and digging up the invasive, Bittersweet, which is the reason for the dead branches we needed to cut. Our group worked hard!! I might also add a hurrah for the dunkin donuts coffee with real half and half.
Goodness gracious! Jerry, Brian, and Bob, you are all too kind – you’re making me blush 🙂
Jane H.: I wasn’t familiar with invasive bittersweet, so just went and looked it up – that must be a bear to remove! Over the weekend, I saw plenty of garlic mustard both in Hemlock Gorge and on the Greenway, and lots of what I’m pretty sure were Japanese knotweed shoots coming up on the Greenway as well, but we didn’t really have a chance to focus on pulling those up this time.
Greg, not a chance – I think our current Ward 5 Alders are all eminently more qualified to serve in that position than I would be!
For more than a decade, my family and I have been mulching with Gail Wintersteiner around the Waban Library, T-stop, and Waban Hall (Starbucks). Gail has been leading this annual event decades before there was a NewtonServes. This year my son and I took a break and painted Newton North classrooms. You can see pictures on the Waban Improvement Society’s facebook page, even the mayor turned up! He didn’t grab a shovel though.
I happily endorse Jen Kohl to fill any vacancies that might develop on the Upper Falls Neighborhood Area Council in this year’s election cycle.
Greg, could you urge any particular philanthropic and successful members of the Newton Business community to contribute to the replacement of the now absent fence at the southern end of the South Burial Ground?
and Greg, who decides the boundaries of the N2 Corridor? It seems to me that the Echo Bridge Office Park on Elliot Street would be a particularly appropriate inclusion in the corridor. It’s on the River, has space for rent according to the sign on the property, and would attract people from the Needham part of the Corridor to the amenities that many attendees at the Corridor kick-off said they wanted like restaurants (Dunn-Gaherin’Ws and the Echo Bridge Cafe) and recreational amenities (Hemlock Gorge and other River front properties on the way to the Echo Bridge Office Park).
Alderman Brian Yates
@Alderman Yates: We have always considered the Echo Bridge Office Park to be a part of the N2 Corridor for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. There are quite a few small innovation economy businesses working there.
Thanks, Greg. That’s good to know.
Brian Yates
Kinda wondering why classrooms in a brand new school need painting already…
@TWT – The painting project at North was called “Operation Bold Paint” – adding color as opposed to “needing to repaint.”
Not sure I will succeed in embedding a video in a comment, but in the meantime here’s the link to my one Tout video of the day, of the NNHS kids at East Parish Burying Ground. http://www.tout.com/m/eu6stw
East Parish is a wonderful green oasis where I wish I could spend more time (above ground!). There are many very tall trees, most of which are due for some pruning of dead wood. I managed to get a few dead branches but even with my 21 ft extending pole saw most were too high, or over gravestones. (They probably need to be pruned by climbers; don’t see how you’d get a bucket truck in with all the gravestones.) Much easier was trimming a forest of suckers from the trunk of a linden (lindens do that), five years’ worth, based on counting the rings of the largest.
Garlic mustard pull at Cold Spring Park in the morning — one of three Newton Conservators garlic mustard pulls, was a little different than usual, because spring is so late. The usual sea of stalks was more like a carpet of little plants that did not pull so easily. But in a couple of weeks garlic mustard should look like this: http://village14.com/newton-ma/2012/05/pull-garlic-mustard-before-it-goes-to-seed-and-save-a-lot-more-work-later/#axzz3YkvB1nYe so if you see it anywhere, pull and dispose of in trash! Controlling the large infestations looks daunting, but keeping a small number of plants from becoming a large number, is doable.