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On Tuesday, New Brunswick Environment Minister Rick Miles was in the village of Cambridge-Narrows to present Robena Weatherley and the Canaan-Washademoak Watershed Association (CWWA) with Environmental Leadership Awards.

Robena's Lifetime Achievement award reflects both her work as a founding member of CWWA as well as her commitment to environmental advocacy throughout her life. As a member of CWWA, Robena has been instrumental in contributing to environmental education in the watershed and beyond through print and audio-visual publications, volunteering with schools, and other community activities.

CWWA received recognition in the Communities, Groups and Organizations category for their continuing work in monitoring water quality, fish populations, forest diversity, and stream ecology in the watershed.

Award recipients were presented with a framed pewter medal and a certificate for a tree to be planted to commemorate their achievements.
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New Brunswick Environment Minister Rick Miles (centre) and Environmental Leadership Award winners Robena Weatherley (third from left) and members of the Canaan-Washademoak Watershed Association
 
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Back in Fredericton, two of our summer projects reached significant milestones.

At Devon Middle School, the interpretive sign for the outdoor classroom has been installed at the constructed wetland. Educators from both the school and the Fredericton Chapter of Ducks Unlimited have been teaching students with the wetland resource throughout the fall, and vegetables from the organic garden were recently harvested and enjoyed throughout the school. It's immensely satisfying to see these resources being used, and we hope that they will continue to develop and provide benefit to the school and local community for years to come.

Finally, Thursday saw the official opening of the nature trail at Garden Creek School. Attended by representatives from the School District and funding agencies, trail volunteers, educators, parents, and school staff and students, the day's events were an opportunity thank all those involved in the project and to celebrate what we had achieved together.
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Principal Greg Moffitt, City Councillor David Kelly, myself, and students from Garden Creek School at the official opening of the nature trail
 
The next step in the trail project will be to develop cross-curricular lessons and activities that utilize the trail and the habitats through which it passes (forest, creek, grassland, and wetland) to teach a number of New Brunswick Elementary School outcomes. This we hope to complete in early 2010.
 
 
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Both yesterday and today I had the good fortune to connect with Fredericton's Landless Gardeners, a group of individuals developing yard sharing and food growing opportunities within the community.

It's exciting and inspiring to see initiatives like this take root — literally! — in the city, not only as occasions for education and skills development associated with methods of local food production, but also as catalysts for deeper community connection and discussions concerning food security and land stewardship.

As Jay Griffiths commented in her wonderful recent essay in Orion Magazine:
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How big am I? As an individual, five foot two and whistling. At a government level, I find I've shrunk, smaller than the X on my ballot paper. But at a community level, I can breathe in five river-sources and breathe out three miles of green valleys.

Scale matters.
The Landless Gardeners are an energetic and dynamic group and it is always refreshing to encounter manners of problem solving that are not prescriptive, where alternative pathways to a solution are encouraged — a vital approach even in small scale food production where 'simple' gardens remain complex ecosystems, albeit in miniature. As David Holmgren, the co-orginator of the permaculture concept, states:
 
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The map is not the territory.
— meaning that, in a systems approach, the creative application of basic principles is to be welcomed, not discouraged. Further:
  
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Complex systems that work tend to evolve from simple ones that work, so finding the appropriate pattern for that design is more important than understanding all of the details of the elements of the system.
Again, from Jay Griffiths:
 
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The process is "so creative and so chaotic," says Giangrande. "Let it unfold—allow it—the key is not to direct it but to encourage it. We've developed the A to C of transition. The D to Z is still to come." Brave, this, and very attractive. It is catalytic, emergent, and dynamic, facing forward with a vivid vitality but backlit with another kind of ancient sunlight: human, social energy.
To contact the Landless Gardeners or for further information, see their website and Facebook group.
 
 

Spent the morning at Devon Middle School redoing the locates for water, gas, and power from a year ago. Now our paperwork is up-to-date! Another "check" on the wetland to-do list :)

As it's been a while since I've visited the school, I decided to check out our tree nurseries... Whoops! Looks like we need to do some weeding! There's a lot more than just white spruce in there now :)  It all looks good, though. Another year and the trees will be large enough to plant out.
 


Elsewhere, at the native wildflower garden, everything is filling in nicely and looking great:
 


It's been a pleasure to work with both David Smith and the City of Fredericton on this project. This garden of native Maritime species continues to draw a lot of attention and acts as an inspiration to many an existing and would-be gardener. The fact that it continually changes its appearance throughout the seasons makes for a visual feast in such a high traffic (foot and bicycle) area.

Other Canadian municipalities aren't quite so understanding, unfortunately; at least when it comes to homeowners and their properties... Franke James writes about her experiences with the City of Toronto throughout her project to landscape her front yard and driveway in this ultimately inspiring — and very educational — visual essay. A little taster is included below — be sure to check it out, leave a comment, and pass it along!
 

 
Busy, busy 08/08/2008
 

Well, the project I spoke of in my previous post has all but engulfed me, hence the lack of updates for the last few weeks.

It continues to be a busy summer. Planning for the installation of the constructed wetland at Devon Middle School is ongoing, and I'm working to put together a weekend environmental education camp for Grades 6–7 at Yoho Lake (see map below) to be offered the weekend of Oct 18–19 for up to 40 students.

If you're an educator reading this, and you're interested in having your students involved, please contact me.


My writing will likely take a back seat over the coming weeks as work on these projects continues. However, if you're still curious as to what I'm up to (and have a short attention span), FriendFeed is a good place to catch all my shorter ramblings from the disparate online communities I inhabit — see my FriendFeed page.

For now, I wish you an auspicious 08/08/08 and I'll leave you in the tranquility of Hays Falls, which I had the pleasure of visiting a few weeks ago.

 
 

From Chris Corrigan:
 

Hey reader(s). Wondering if you would join me in a little exercise…

A few months ago I was sitting with Christina Baldwin in a World Cafe on the question of “What question, if asked, would change everything?” and we realized that the answer for us was something like “What would it take for you to be curious?”

That question is powerful because a curious person is a non-judgemental person. A curious person is a learner, not a passive participant in the cultural stream. If people practiced not only asking questions, but being curious about the answers I think that would change everything.

Last month, I was in Ontario with a friend of mine and he asked “what are your goals? What would I see if I talked to you in six months?” I told him that I don’t have any goals, but instead I run these little research projects. I get curious about things and start noticing them in my life and work and I usually use a combination of this blog and a moleskine journal to record my results. It keeps me moving forward.

So, I’d like to invite you to try this approach out and see if there is something that gathers your attention and piques your curiosity enough that you’d be willing to engage in a a somewhat public 30 day research project. For myself, I am looking at the question of how to be of service in large scale change work from the perspective of someone who has limited contact and influence. As a facilitator, I come into processes, but often I am not involved in a day to day role. So how do I help encourage shift where I can?

I’m going to be thinking and reflecting over the next 30 days on this question and I invite you to choose a question and engage in a research project as well. See what we can learn. [...] You in?

What a great idea and shared opportunity — I’m in, too.

My question to myself relates to being part of the process as an effect on the process; i.e. how can I best step out of my own way and let change happen as if I was not there.

Make sense? Hmmm. Let’s see what happens… Chris has suggested posting something about what we have learned about the 30-day journey once complete.

 
 

Well, the dust has settled enough for me to write a quick update on the native plant demonstration garden we've been working on on Fredericton's northside.

We've completed another season of work at the site since I last wrote about the project. Most of the work in summer 2007 was concerned with weeding, and splitting up and planting out many of the plants that have grown so well in the meantime. David Smith, our project partner at Save A Plant, still visits and maintains the site regularly, and — other than losing a Rush aster (Aster juncifomis) to the elements, having one of our False Solomon's seals (Maianthemum racemosum) stolen, and a retrieving a wandering Shadbush (Amelanchier arborea) (not quite sure what happened there...) — everything has remained intact and is responding well to the full sun of the site, which is unusual for these particular native species.

Our planting map now looks like this:

Twenty-nine species in total. Recent additions to the list include:

Viburnum trilobum (Highbush cranberry)
Taxus canadensis (Canada yew)
Artemisia stelleriana (Beach wormwood)
Tradescantia pilosa (Spiderwort)
Cimicifuga racemosa (Black snakeroot)
Larix laricina (American larch)
Stylophorum diphylla (Wood poppy)

Strips of bark donated from Odell Park were used to make an intentionally ramshackle fence; along with some boulders donated by the City of Fredericton, these help to break up the lines of the site and make for more interesting visuals.

Some pictures from late summer 2007:

 

In addition to the flyers / posters we produced to help advertise the project, we also produced a 24-page handbook that discusses the rational behind the CityScapes initiative and the benefits of planting native species and maintaining riparian buffers, while providing all the information required to choose the best selection of native species for your green space, the ecological benefits of each, and what to consider when planting at a particular site.

When funds permit, we intend to mass-produce this handbook and make it available to gardeners and householders for free at local nurseries and garden centres.

Finally, we designed two interpretive panels for the site based on the content contained within the promotional flyers; one discusses the CityScapes initiative in general, the other focuses on the demonstration garden in particular.

With generous in-kind support from the City of Fredericton, these interpretive panels were successfully installed at the site late in the summer of 2007.
 

 
 

Redux | May 12, 2007: Want to know what's hot in the world of web apps? Then go check out this year's list of Web 2.0 award winners.

And, for the freelancers out there, Yoav Ezer has put together a comprehensive annotated list of web-based tools covering everything from marketing to money management to writing tools. Bookmark it, already!

 
 

If, like me, you spend significant amounts of time working online from home (I do have a "proper" office, but telecommuting offers me greater freedom and is better suited to my work style; plus there are enjoyable distractions at home), then this post by Mike Gunderloy at Web Worker Daily may be just what you need to help expand your online office.

 
 

[Cross-posted at Eric Eckl's "Water Words That Work".]

I have a request for all of you today.

A little background: Eric’s blog serendipitously went live at the same time ESDRC was considering developing a number of short movies related to water use and watershed management. Needless to say, we’ve found the information very useful. Currently, it is our intention to develop a series of 4­–7 minute shorts, each with a different focus, and take them on the road to local rural and urban communities. We intend to partner with a group that travels the province (New Brunswick) during the summer and fall and presents old Hollywood movies in the outdoors. We envisage that each screening will be preceded by one of the short water movies. An individual from ESDRC will also be present throughout the evening to offer more information and answer questions.

We are not entirely new to filmmaking but we have never secured funding for this type of venture before. Given that there are likely to be other videographers with similar interests and/or greater experience reading this, I would welcome any comments or suggestions you may have related to funding.

Are there common pitfalls to avoid with this type of project, and what should we consider if requesting assistance from arts and culture bodies (a first for us) as opposed to environmental trusts (our traditional source of project funds)?

Many thanks!

 
Confabb.com 01/10/2008
 

Confabb combines an aggregate database of major conferences, conventions, and trade shows sorted by industry with social networking tools designed to empower conference attendees to improve their overall experience. Built into the site is a reputation management system to be used by conference attendees, speakers, organizers, and administrators allowing people to plan for and attend conferences, and critique and review those they have attended and want to share with colleagues. It aims to provide a comprehensive listing of events with a robust tool set for maximizing the conference experience via the live Web.