Reported by Jessica Lu
On April 22nd, 2023, Murrieta Members participate with Habitat for Humanity Inland Valley in the Planting Native Plants at Menifee Better Together. In honor of Earth Day, Menifee hosted a 600- volunteer event to help preserve and clean up Menifee. It’s the 10th year of the project this year.
What a challenge to arrive for check-in and orientation before 7am! But all our members made it on time! It’s exciting to see so many smiling faces, people are ready for the hard work, and many are whole family came together, few parents even brought their infant babies along with in order for their other young ones can join. Members checked in with their project, got some breakfast, and got a table to wait for the orientation to start. The mayor / city council members took turn to give a speech and good wishes for this event.
After the orientation, members got instructions on where to meet and drove to the designated park. The abundant rainfall this year not only made the California poppy blooming in Riverside county and all mountains were covered with green shade, but also allowed weeds to find the best opportunity to grow, some of the invaded weeds are as tall as our young members. At the park, members began by digging out the invaded plants and weeds.Members would put the plants/weeds in a bucket then dump it out into a pile. After, members assigned with 3 native plants in a pot to plant it. Our advisor was a “pro” in planting, she taught the members how to get the plants out of the pot without damaging the plants, and then loose the pot soil by patting around gently, put the plants in the hole (hole size must be 2 times of the pot), then covered with mixed new soil. After planting, members covered the plants with new mulch, spread the mulch with rake as flat as possible. Planting job now is done!
Members then moved onto the sloped area to remove the Craspedia, the Craspedia gave the pretty yellow flowers, so you can see the whole slopes are yellow, it’s actually very pretty, however don’t be fooled by it’s beauty, the Capspedia is harmful to the animals. Members used tools such as weed removers and shovels to clear them. As they cleared the plants, the nature ranger asked the members to move to another park nearby to help with their progress since this park was already almost finshed. So, members drove to the nearby park and got instructions to collect the debris around the park and then move onto the planting more plants next to the sidewalk. After members finally finished, they went back to the area where orientation was held and members held snakes, bearded dragons, picked their favorite flower seeds and stayed there for a little bit and enjoyed the BBQ lunch. Members had lots of fun participating in this event, learned life skills how to plant plants, more importantly, they demonstrated support for environmental protection! They’ll be back again next year!
Volunteers:
Jessica Lu / Adora Xiao / Julie (Hsin Chen) Lu / Aaliyah Xu / Allen Xu : 5 hrs
Daisy Chen (San Diego Branch): 5 hrs
