It’s hard to believe that there is only one week left at Mountaintop. We accomplished a lot this week and I am excited to finish out the last week strong. 

This week at the park my main focus with maintenance was the luffas. The luffa plants are growing well, but a lot of weeds grew last week that needed to be removed. I removed the weeds and added compost, as well as comfrey leaves as mulch to support the growth of the luffas and stop weeds from growing. Because the luffas are growing more, I also set up the trellis again; I did not follow a specific shape, but it does have two peaks. I hope that the plants respond well to the trellis and will begin to climb it. 

I also helped to work on the pathway, mostly by filling up wheelbarrows with wood chips. Thursday morning, I also removed sod for a decent portion around the herb spiral, but I did not dig very deep. We also placed cardboard down that we found in the waste stream around Lehigh’s campus. We are about halfway done with the pathway, and we will most likely get it finished within the first few weeks of the fall semester. 

I also signed ourselves up for Chipdrop, a service that allows arbors to give away wood chips and logs to gardeners. I placed a request for wood chips, and while this does not guarantee that we will receive wood chips by a certain date, it does mean that if an opportunity arises where someone in the area needs to give wood chips away they will see our request.

We are continuing to update the website, and we made a lot of progress this week. Not only did we change the layout of some of the pages on the website, as well as adding a community partners tab to our main menu, but we skimmed through lots of old blog content and removed content that was either outdated or unfit for the website. We also continued to rewrite different posts under the “Processes and Techniques” tab, and we will edit these and upload them soon. It is a little frustrating to have to edit so much of the website, but it is important to our team that the content accurately reflects the mission and values of the Southside Permaculture Park.

Thursday afternoon, we also presented at the Lehigh Summer Research Expo. We had some really great conversations with some of our current partners, and we also met some new people that were very invested in our project. We got to talk to Mark about working with him to set up an archway for the park in the fall, and we met a filmmaker who was interested in filming the park for a documentary through Connor. It was also nice to see the other posters and learn more about what other Lehigh students are researching. After the expo, we won an award for best poster design in the environmental category!