2/27 Saturday

Louise went into work early this morning to finish up some paperwork so while she was busy, we did a load of laundry and baked a banana bread.  When Louise came back, we went to the Rio Grande Healthy Living Park to volunteer for their clean up day.  This is a 38 acre park very close to downtown.  They use the land for recreation (bike and walking paths along the river), an orchard for the local food bank and a community garden.  Dave helped to clear the irrigation ditch by raking out the tumble weeds and leaves.  They made a huge bonfire in an open space to burn all the dry debris.  Louise and I walked around the perimeter and picked up trash that had blown in or was dumped on purpose (you know that some people are just pigs) - food wrappers, liquor bottles, soda cans, bits of plastic, etc.  When I came back to drop off my full bag, I noticed that two men were building something.  It turned out to be a hoop house for composting.  They seemed to need a bit of help as they had never built anything before so I helped them get set up and cemented the plastic piping for the spine and ribs of the house.  Patrick, an agronomist, and Francisco from Guatemala were very nice to work with and seemed grateful for my suggestions.  We left before the structure was erected as the glue wasn't dry enough yet, but I will stop by later to take a pic of the finished product.  We stopped for lunch and then headed out to the CO gator farm as Louise really wants to see some gators.  When we got there, we discovered that today was an annual free day and the line was very long.  We stood there for a few minutes, but the line didn't move very fast so we decided to leave and come back another day and pay the entrance fee.  We came back and relaxed for a while and then made chicken and salmon for dinner.  Dave and Louise thought they saw a baby beaver in the pond, but by the time I got out to the deck to look, it had disappeared.  Oh, well, maybe tomorrow I will get lucky.  Dave threw some more sticks in the pond and we saw a beaver come to take them away.