Eagle Eye has an opportunity to help out in the Mt. Zion-FUBS Cemetery (see description below). If you are on spring break this week (or free this weekend), come join us! Depending on your school’s requirements, your work at the cemetery could help fulfill service hours.
From Mt. Zion-FUBS:
We are fortunate to have been given a large number of bare root tree seedlings to support our burial grounds preservation program (Thank you! Jim Woodworth, Restoration Branch/Watershed Protection Division, DC Department of Energy & Environment). Planting these seedlings will help mitigate the erosion we are experiencing on the hillcrests and hillsides of the cemeteries. The seedlings will also replace tree canopy being lost as our legacy trees age out, and provide habitat for the many birds and critters who are a part of our grounds. The five species we will receive are regionally found trees; they will give a diversity that offers insurance against potential species-specific diseases, as well as yielding different canopy heights, and visual esthetics.
We expect to receive the seedlings on Tuesday, April 6th. As the bare-root seedlings have a somewhat short “shelf life”, we need to plant all of them during the window of sunup Wednesday, April 7th through sundown Sunday, April 11th.
We will be available (and planting!) during daylight hours all of those days. If you, family, or friends can help out, anytime during that timeframe, please let me know. We can provide some shovels, water jugs, a wheelbarrow, and organically enriched topsoil for planting. If you have garden gloves, digging shovels, or clippers, please bring them. As parking is limited in the area, arrival by public transportation, bicycles, or on foot is encouraged. We will ask our Dumbarton House friends to allow us some parking in their lot (access to the parking lot is via a spur road coming off of 27th Street NW at the junction of Q Street NW).
Thank you for considering this opportunity to help preserve our burial grounds.
P.S. We have lots of Covid distancing and fresh air at our disposal! That said, we ask that you bring and wear a mask in any circumstances where you may be in close proximity to others.
