OFG updates - student assistants, planning, and save the date

[Sarah Damron]

Hello friends,

Just sending you an update on the garden project...

On Wednesday, January 26 a few of us got together to assess where we're at and talk about next steps.  Where we're at right now is that we should have a little bit of money coming to us from the Monterey County Weekly Community Fund campaign at the end of last year (woohoo!) and, on a less positive note, all the grass we pulled has returned to haunt the Green Spot and no native flowers have popped up...yet  =(   But, nevertheless, we continue on!  As for where we're going, we discussed opportunities to get some regularly scheduled garden support from local college students and resolved to work with them to develop a garden plan.

On Thursday, January 27 I attended a Service Learning Partners Day at CSUMB.  As a result, we now have three intrepid students who have joined us from the Return of the Natives program--Rachael, Sebastian, and Chris--and who have agreed to donate 30 hours of their time (each!) through the rest of the semester to assist with our project.  I also met a young lady named Kate who is an assistant to Sarah Hardgrave at the City of PG Planning and who said she could research applicable landscape ordinances.  Double woohoo!  Now we're in business...

For the students, and for all of us who are working together on this project, I have organized a master work schedule/task list to help us work collaboratively on our own time.  It can be viewed/edited here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ag9SrI2nMR-WdHBadGY4SHllaEw2cHFQdTl0WmJqQnc&hl=en&authkey=CN-Cs2M .  The students will be using it to coordinate amongst themselves and track their hours, but certainly it can be used by all of us as well.  If everyone can commit to using this tool for tasks they plan to cover, it should allow us to efficiently coordinate tasks amongst ourselves and minimize our need to all be at the same place at the same time.  If you see a task you would like to cover, please add your name to the roster (below the tasks), give your name a unique font color, and change the color of the text for any tasks you are committing to cover so that it matches your designated color.  It's super easy!

Although we are very fortunate to have the help of these students, they will need our help as well.  Please take a look at the task list and see if there are one or more tasks you might be able to help with in the next month (especially if you have technical expertise or tools to assist with any such tasks).  A little teamwork goes a long way  =)  

Save the Date:  We are aiming to have a plan and be putting plants in the ground at Good Old Days April 9-10 in Pacific Grove.  Hope to see you there if not before!

Your ocean friendly gardener,

Sarah  

Sarah Damron

Central California Regional Manager

Surfrider Foundation

sda...@surfrider.org

cell: 831 239 1520