Groups Find Natural Way to Celebrate Earth Day
Warm weather and clear skies Saturday gave locals plenty to celebrate on Earth Day with beach cleanups, flower plantings and lessons in papermaking and pesticide-free gardening.
Volunteers in midtown Ventura pulled weeds and planted wildflowers at a butterfly garden, a tiny plot of grass between a pizza place and a clinic that two years ago was a favorite hangout for prostitutes and drug dealers.
About 50 monarch butterflies, each individually housed in a 2-inch-square box, fluttered against their cardboard containers as the boys from Cub Scout Troop 3176 planted milkweed bushes.
Gwendolyn Alley, a creative writing instructor at Ventura College who lives in an apartment that overlooks the quarter-acre site, said she grew tired of watching people trash the place.
“It just made my heart suffocate,” Alley said. “There was this guy who used to hang out and throw knives into the trees.”
She decided to put her bachelor’s degree in environmental studies to work cleaning it up.
Two years ago, Alley won a $500 state grant to buy plants. Each year since, interest in the Thompson Street site has grown and now local businesses donate shrubs and flowers, supplies and refreshments for the volunteers. This year, native birds and butterflies have started to return.
“My little fantasy is to create a quail habitat down there,” said Alley, pointing to the ravine where old tires and used oil were dumped. “Up here is like a meadow.”
The property that lies behind the “No Dumping” sign is now spotted with bright orange poppies along a circular stone path. A small stone birdbath sits in the center of the garden and freshly tilled mulch surrounds the property.
Across town, the mentally disabled clients of Ventura County Arc showed off their papermaking business, where they create greeting cards and invitations for several Main Street gift shops and other businesses.
They use recycled office paper and dryer lint to make the paper, and a press and drying rack bought with state grants help the process along.
Money from the sale of the cards and invitations is used to pay the clients a wage of about $5 an hour, said instructor Rachel Robinson.
The project started as a class activity about a year and a half ago.
“It was just supposed to be a one-day project,” said Karen Reilly, the program supervisor. “And it took off and has become a way to supplement the program.”
Clients start the 24-hour process by tossing shredded paper and dryer lint into a blender with water. Sometimes they add dried flowers.
The resultant mushy substance is then sifted through screens and dried. The end product is a piece of rough pastel paper decorated with bits of dried flowers.
Meanwhile, under a tent at the beach, Ray Olson told a small crowd how he lured snails from his garden with a little beer and waged a bitter, but pesticide-free war against ants in his Ventura home.
Olson, a waste management specialist for the city of Ventura, was one of three speakers at Saturday’s beachside compost workshop.
Gardeners can be rid of snails, which can live up to 12 years, by nestling a tiny capful of beer in the dirt, he said. The snail will either drown in the beer or die from the alcohol, Olson said.
Ants leave scent trails for others to follow and it’s important to keep surfaces clean, so they cannot find their way back, he said. They also nest close to their food source. Olson said he lured an entire ant colony from his house to his backyard by moving a bucket of garbage a few increments each day until it reached his yard.
“The last stop was the compost pile outside,” he said. “I got them out the backdoor and I haven’t had a single ant intrude over my threshold since.”
