Ivy and Party

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

This Saturday, December 7th, please join the Friends of Indian River for a volunteer event to remove Invasive Ivy Indian River Park from 9:00 AM to Noon.   We'll mainly be cutting English Ivy that has grown up trees.   This will prevent the ivy from creating fruit and creating new outbreaks in the park.  Please wear closed-toe shoes, a hat and bring work gloves; we recommend long pants and long sleeved shirts. Bring pruning clippers, loppers, screwdrivers (which are amazingly useful in prying ivy off tree trunks) and/or pruning saws if you have them.  We'll have water and a snacks available.   Participants under 18 years of age must have adult supervision.  Meet at the park entrance at Rokeby Ave. and Main St. (2001 Rokeby Ave.) which is located just south of Military Highway, i.e. across Military Highway from the Fire Station.

Next Thurday, December 12th, we are having our Holiday Party at 7 PM in at the Oaklette United Methodist Church, 520 Oaklette Drive.   This will be our end of year celebration to recognize our many accomplishments, recognize our volunteers, and socialize.  Please bring a desert to share and join the festivities.  We'll have a silent auction, so you can finish some Christmas shopping too.   Please also consider bringing a donation of non-perishable food items for the Oaklette United Methodist Church food pantry to the meeting this evening. Even if you have not been to a meeting in a while or if this would be your very first meeting, we encourage you to come out and partake in the merriment.

Adopt-A-Road Cleanup

Thank you to the eleven volunteers who came out this morning to clean up along Indian River Road and under Indian River Bridge.   All in all, the volume of trash was lower than in past cleanups, which is an encouraging trend.   Still we collected 6 big bags of trash from under the bridge and another 9 bags along the roadway from MacDonald to Wingfield.    The team was proud of their accomplishment: all litter we collected is litter that no longer despoils our streets or is washed into our waterways.

By far, the item we collected in the greatest quantity were hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cigarette butts.   If you know a smoker, please remind them that cigarette butts are made with plastic fibers, are not biodegradable, and should never be tossed out their car window.

Inaugural Hike at Indian River Park

We had a great turnout for our inaugural hike on the new nature trail in Indian River Park.   A big thank you to all the groups who made this possible including City of Chesapeake's Department of Parks and Recreation, the Urban Forest Trail Blazers, the Chesapeake Master Gardeners, the Virginia Cooperative Extension – Hampton Roads Master Gardeners, the Chesapeake Arboretum and the Eastern Virginia Mountain Bike Association, and all the great volunteers of the Friends of Indian River.

For more information about the park and the nature trail, see our new pages about the park under the Resources Tab:
- Park Info
- Native Trees of Indian River Park

On December 7th, we'll be back in the park to work on the removal of invasive English ivy.   Come on out and lend a hand.   For our full listing of upcoming events see our calendar.

Update: Mary Reid Barrow's article on the hike is now online at http://hamptonroads.com/2013/11/coastal-journal-big-trees-are-draw-indian-river-nature-trail