On a coolish, cloudy Saturday morning, August 15, the Lake Shenandoah pollinator meadow is at the height of summer bloom. Everything is refreshed from yesterday’s rain, and eight-foot-high cup plant towers over the trail, almost making a tunnel. Cindy Westley, Tricia Buckley, Bill Howe, and I, are here for our chapter’s monthly trail-trimming session.
A man with binoculars is looking for hummingbirds. A woman photographs flowers with her phone. Later, she stops to ask what we’re doing and admits that even though she loves the pollinator meadow, the trail can feel uncomfortably closed in sometimes.
And that’s why we’re here with our electric hedge trimmers and weed whackers, clippers, rakes, and wheelbarrow. While the plants are beautiful, summer’s abundant growth narrows the trail causing discomfort for some people who use it. Through our monthly work, we hope to make the trail more enjoyable for people who already appreciate it, and to be good pollinator meadow ambassadors for those who haven’t yet discovered its beauty.
This is a special place. A family comes along and Bill shows a very eager young boy how to tell poison ivy apart from the other plants. Two women tell us the pollinator meadow is “one of the best things about summer” that makes it “worth putting up with the rest of what summer brings.” Everyone we meet thanks us. Happy to do it. And we are.
– Scott Jost