Boylston ALB Meeting

Tonight at Boylston Middle/High School Clint McFarland from the USDA and Ken Gooch from the DCR spoke about the beetle that has now been found throughout the town of Boylston, there plans for surverying the area along with cutting infested trees and replantings. After the hour long presentation there was time for questions. One of the major points stressed was the importants of not transporting host species fire wood out of the quarentine zone, this leads to the unknown spread of the beetle. Overall people seem concerned that the beetle is in the area, but it is clear the USDA and DCR have a good plan established for how to handle everything. The other good news is the overall severity of the infestation in Boylston is not as bad as parts throughout the city of Worcester.

2010 Massachusetts Tree Steward Training Program

Today Peggy and I went to the first day of the Massachusetts Tree Steward Training Program at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts. The conference was presented by the Massachusetts DCR Urban & Community Forestry Program & Massachusetts Community Forestry Council. And was sponsored by: The USDA Forest Service and The Massachusetts Tree Wardens & Foresters Association.

We learned a variety of different things. We started the day with tree identification, then had a quick introduction to the working forest initiative, tree response to pruning, and then after lunch we learned about utilizing tree inventories and iTree. Then we finished the day with a look at Worcester as a case study.

The best part of the day was learning about utilizing tree inventories. We were introduced to google fusion tables. This is going to be a great resource for use to look at where all of our trees, keep records of all our tree health and create maps of where our trees are.

9:00 Registration and Coffee

9:30 Welcome and Overview
(Eric Seaborn & Alan Snow)

9:45 Tree Identification Outside
(Joe Perry)

10:45 Introduction to the Working
Forest Initiative (Douglas
Hutcheson & Michael
Downey)

11:30 Trees Response to Pruning
Out Doors (Brian Kane)

12:30 LUNCH, provided

1:30 Utilizing Tree Inventories
(Mike Olkin)

2:15 Break

2:30 Introduction to iTree Tools
(David Bloniarz)

3:30 Looking at Community
Trees, Worcester a Case
Study (Eric Seaborn)

Quinsigamond Community College

Saturday, October 23rd at Qunsigamond Community College from 8:30-12 we planted 65 trees with the help from the boy scouts and girl scouts. Congressman McGovern, Lt. Gov. Murray, Senator Chandler, Rep O'Day, Mayor O'Brien, City Manager O'Brien and representatives from QCC and the Scotties/ReLeaf project and American Forest were on hand. The event was sponsor by Scotties/RELeaf.

We were able to plant 65 trees in 7 different locations around the QCC campus. Spruce, Dawn Red Woods, Red Oaks, Serviceberries are just some of the species we planted. We added to the 100 trees that we previously planted with the help of CSX last spring. The weather was beautiful and everyone worked hard to learn how to properly plant a tree and then planted the trees. Everyone recieved goody bags from QCC and t-shirts/bags from Scotties REleaf. It was a great effort of the community coming together to help plant trees in one of the hardest hit areas.



Read about the day!

WTI in the Worcester Telegram

Holden Give Away

Today we held a give away at a new development called Shady Lane in Holden. We were able to give away 52 trees. The demonstration were held in peoples yard. We gave away flowering plums, dogwoods, blackgum tupelo and cherry trees. The developments in Holden have been stripped off all the trees in order to make room for houses, the developer is then responsable for "replanting" but most of the time only one or two trees are planted per lot. It is nice to be able to add more trees to these neighborhoods.

Midland Elementary School Planting

Today along with the kindergarden at Midland Street Elementary school we planted two cherry trees to help add some trees to the new place space that the school completed over the summer. The highlight of the day was when I poured the water into the hole all of the kids started yelling "gross! gross!" but after explaining to them the importance of water to the trees survival they didn't think it was as gross. They also really enjoyed when I was breaking the root ball apart, as I described it as if I were giving it a hair cut, they thought I had given the tree a really cool hair cut.

Tracking Update

We have been working hard to try and collect data regarding all of the trees we have planted throughout the last two years. We have started making progress on the 2009 residents. All of our trees from 2009 were planted in the Burncoat neighborhood.

From 2009 Residents:

44 Streets have been visited. 53 Streets need to be visited.

247 Addresses have been visited. 2009 Resident Total Number of Addresses: 1077

88 or 36% can’t be viewed from the street

2 Trees need to be stacked:

9 Cutting Avenue

100 Francis

2 Dead:

92 Francis

35 Randall Street (we have already removed the tree, died cause it was planted above to many roots)

2nd Give Away of the Fall.

Today was our second give away of the Fall at ERA Key Reality on East Mountain Street. We had a good turnout and were able to gave away over 50 trees. Many of our trees went to Blaire Drive in Holden MA where we are working with the street to help them add a few more trees to there neighborhood.