This coming week of adventures....

We have 5 school groups coming for salmon creekwalks.

5. There also happen to be 5 days in a work week. Which means we have a school group every day this week.

I get exhausted after groups of kids or really any kind of outreach thing - the whole "being on" for a couple hours (keeping relevant conversation, keeping upbeat, happy, knowledgeable...) is mentally tiring. With a group of kids each day (sizes ranging from 8 to 50 + parents) I'm going to be sleeping like a baby every night.

Two of the groups are mixed age, I think. One is kindergarteners, another is at risk high school youth (god this could potentially be awful), and the last I'm not sure - Paola (mentor), set that one up.

-------------(insert image of obnoxious and noisy children)--------------

We had another restoration day this Saturday - about8 or 9 volunteers showed up and we planted nearly 40 trees. All within 2 hours and with only 6 shovels. We had this whole last hour to do more miscellaneous tasks, from cutting back blackberry to removing not invasive non-native plants to collecting alder seed. Things that needed to happen at some point, of course. All this happened with a totally beat up pair of fish in the creek right there. The male's kype (nose-protrusion dealy) was beaten and partially missing. These fish are the swimming dead. Zombie fish, decomposing as they spawn.