Santa and his helper the
Mummer find out
whether these dogs have been naughty or nice

Our dogs must have been very good this year, because for the first time ever Santa Paws visited  our park.   With help from his colleague Dan Barry, the New Years Mummer Man, Santa  posed with each dog while the dog owners  snapped pictures on their cell phones.  Santa even gave each dog a giant dog biscuit.  Santa Paws also reminded us of the less fortunate dogs in city shelters this holiday season, and  appealed to everyone for donations to the Pennsylvania S.P.C.A. to help this worthy cause.   Under the mellowing influence of the MOST DELICIOUS HOT CHOCOLATE EVER, generously donated by McShea’s Take Away on Haverford Avenue in Narberth,

Hot Chocolate from McShea’s Take Away in Narberth kept us cheerful and warm

we collected over $560 for the P.S.P.C.A.  (What did you put into that hot chocolate, Andrew?)  Once again our Friends of WMC Park members surpassed expectations with their joie de vivre and generosity.  Thanks everyone for supporting our event and the P.S.P.C.A.

Getting ready

James in costume supervises the preparation of the dog biscuits

Santa with John and Star

Santa rests up after a long day

Santa and Coda

Eagle Scout Pranav Pillai with Assistant Scoutmaster, various members of the Friends of WMC steering committee, his dad, and the beautiful new garden furniture he made for the Park.

We are excited to report that, thanks to the Eagle Scout program and our local troop supported by the Narberth Fourth of July Committee, our Wildlife and Respite Garden is now graced with four very handsome benches and a table.  The furniture was hand made and designed by Pranav Pillai, Eagle Scout candidate, with help from his troop.  In addition, the troop has committed to help us with the garden next year.  Needless to say, we are delighted to have the help.  Many thanks to Pranav and his troop for this much appreciated public service.

Maddie Kessler and Mary Field take a short weeding break

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the Wildlife and Respite Garden, you’ll have seen lots of progress.   In September and October, we had a total of 6 work days (four announced, and two ad hoc ones that just happened).  Eight hardy volunteers (Dan Barry, Chris Bushnell, Mary Field, Karen Hinckley, Maddie Kessler, Tessa Lamont, Ellen Reese, and Ellen Briggs) donated a total of 40 hours of their time to finish our log and wood chip path, plant shrubs, weed, and mulch.

Dan Barry mulches with an assist from Whitney and friend

We had great support from the  folks at L. M. Parks and Recreation and also from Cramer Design Associates (which planted the big hawthorns that were too big for us to manage) and K Squared Landscaping (which brought us the big hawthorns at cost with no delivery charge.)

That finishes up our official garden workdays until spring, though if anyone would like to do some weeding and watering during the remainder of the Fall, just let us know!

Karen Hinckley takes a photo break from mulch spreading

Three new Winter King hawthorns and two Appalachian Spring flowering dogwoods have found their new home in our Wildlife and Respite Garden.  These trees were donated by Karen Garbeil,  Jay and Marya Margolis,  Hazel Murphy, Marilyn and Bob Steiner,  and Jon and Janine Weller.    The trees will be dedicated to their respective honorees in the spring.

A newly planted Winter King hawthorn and our new boulder retaining wall, created by LM Parks & Rec crew

In addition, the great guys from Lower Merion’s Parks and Recreation department came to our rescue once again.   Part of the garden sloped so steeply that garden visitors felt lopsided while walking the path.  So, they terraced the steep slope to give us a better path and a nice new garden feature as a bonus.  Thanks Parks and Rec!!

Baby Flowering Dogwood ‘Appalachian Spring’ settles into its new home

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, park visitors had the opportunity to participate in our first ever Dog Days of Summer fundraiser event.  Our members and other visitors purchased home made dog biscuits, Gnat Hats, our chic new Friends of WMC Park t shirts, sparkling lemonade, coffee (generously donated by Cosi in Bryn Mawr) and doughnuts (generously donated by Giant in Wynnewood).  We are so grateful to the many, many members who turned out for the event.  All of the t shirts and almost all of our other offerings were bought up, and many of you took the

An eager shopper investigates the goods for sale

opportunity to make generous donations to the cause!  Thanks to all who worked on the event and to all who turned out to support Friends of West Mill Creek Park.

Rocket is ready to make a purchase; Junior is still deciding

The new sitting rocks are inspected on their first day

On Friday, June 27, 2014, an LM Township crew installed our Friends of WMC Park sitting stones–each weighing approximately one ton.  Thanks to the guys for their patience as we said “No–a little to the left–not quite that far–maybe a little closer to the water–let’s turn it around so the other side faces the stream. . . . ”

Lee, Tessa, and Bailey put the new beach boulders to the test.

June 2014–Chris Bushnell with his new creation

Kudos to our hardworking volunteers for all the work done on the Wildlife and Respite Garden—it just goes to show that dog people are the greatest! 

The following people have participated in one or more of the eleven official work days we have had this year: Dan Barry, Ellen Briggs, Paula Burns, Chris Bushnell, Jill Cooper, David Dutwin , Aidan Dutwin, Elias Dutwin, Mary Field, Karen Garbeil, Karen Hinckley, Tessa Lamont, Martha Lombardo , Debby Merker, Hazel Murphy, Ellen Reese, and Toba Spector.

During those official work days, our volunteers have contributed a total of 98 volunteer hours on our garden project, and I think everyone will agree that we have accomplished a lot in those hours.

In addition to the official work days, a number of people have lent a hand doing a variety of tasks such as transplanting daffodils, carrying logs, unstaking trees that no longer needed the stakes in the riparian area, or bringing newspaper and cardboard to the stockpile we built up over the winter to prepare for the garden project (thanks especially to Elaine Stern for the mountains of cardboard she schlepped to the park). And let’s not forget the latest contribution: master craftsman Chris Bushnell just built us a very handsome compost bin using pallets donated by the Tired Hands brewery. It has beautiful hinged doors, is expertly leveled, and will give us plentiful space for compost production. Thanks Chris (and Took, who waited patiently for hours while Chris worked on this project).

As always, thanks to Jamie Markizon for hosting and providing tech support for our website.  Click on the Gallery tab at the top of the page to see some pictures. p.s There are so many people who have helped us that I am certain to have left some of you out. This is not a lack of gratitude, just a spotty memory and/or lack of recordkeeping. Please let me know if I’ve unintentionally omitted you and I’ll correct the record!

Thank you to yesterday’s volunteers

Six volunteers showed up for our first planting day yesterday.  We planted fifteen bog-tolerant shrubs–native inkberry holly and summersweet cultivars–in the soggy area near the gate.  Many, many thanks to all our volunteers, each and every one of you did a fantastic job!

Future work plans:  Good news/bad news

Bad News:  Our first two workdays spent digging deep into the garden to remove invasive vine roots revealed that, not only do we have a frequently boggy area right at the gate, but in other areas there are very large chunks of asphalt and also parking lot gravel in concentrations that will make planting difficult or impossible.

Good news:  We met with Dave DeAngelis of LM Parks department and with our site designer, Harriet Cramer of Cramer Design Associates, to discuss how to address this situation.  The Township has once again come to the rescue.  Township crews will dig out the asphalt and parking lot gravel and fill in with new topsoil.  They will also change the location of the big maintenance gate and will add a small gate for public access, so that no one has to wade through a bog to enter the garden.  In addition, Cramer Design Associates will redesign the site plan to account for the change in gate locations.  Thank you Dave and Harriet!

If all goes well, the Township’s site preparation work and the redesigned site plan will be done next week.  The  Township will also provide a water tank and a pile of mulch so that we can carry on with our original plan to do more planting and apply cardboard/newspaper and mulch as an organic weed suppressant.  In view of these developments the June 1 work day is cancelled.  We will let you know the date and time of our next volunteer work day as soon as possible.