Who can say what Betsy Valle was thinking that day when walking her little four-legged pal, Coco, along a section of grim alley recently inhabited by mangled vehicles and abandoned dreams that the intersection of N. Decatur alley at N. St. Louis had become? Nonethless, it’s not a rare sight to see pedestrians and bicyclists passing by on this segment of the future North Portland Greenway Trail. To see beyond the nexus of desperation and litter that have dominated the site a person needs rose tinted glasses. Or, maybe, simply the naturally sunny nature and can-do spirit that is Betsy’s. Walking north on Decatur adjacent to Baltimore Woods corridor, there’s…

The dormant winter months are a great time to take an inventory of your garden plants and plan for the upcoming growing season. Every spring, Friends of Baltimore Woods holds a native plant sale in partnership with Sparrowhawk Native Plants. This year our FoBW/Sparrowhawk Native Plant Sale is the weekend of April 28 and 29. It is the only fundraiser for our non-profit and the revenue goes to sponsoring our free public winter talks; donations to our community partners; and buying tools, seeds, native plants and supplies for our native habitat restoration work in north Portland’s 30 acres of Baltimore Woods. The pandemic has left some perks in its wake,…

Winter Talk: How to Choose the Best Plants for Pollinators The Friends of Baltimore Woods will host our annual Winter Talk on Saturday, February 11th, from 1pm – 2pm at the St Johns Community Center at 8427 N. Central St. An additional 30 min Q&A period will follow the talk. Look for our event signs on the day of the talk! Our guest speaker is Matthew Shepherd of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Protection. Mr. Shepherd is the Director of Outreach & Education for Xerces, and a passionate advocate for educating the public about invertebrates (animals without internal skeletons, such as insects) as well as restoring & enhancing the natural…

Oregon Butterfly Is Endangered Species Act Success : The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that the Fender’s blue butterfly will be downlisted from endangered to threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. This action is based on the recovery of butterfly populations in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. “The Endangered Species Act has ensured the full recovery of more than 50 species, and the Fender’s blue is now well on its way,” said Quinn Read, Oregon policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This little butterfly was nearly lost to Oregon, but now we can celebrate its recovery along with the 50th anniversary of the landmark law that saved…

The non-native plant Italian arum (Arum italicum), is kind of like an unwelcome night-owl roommate who raids the fridge while everyone sleeps and co-opts shared spaces with their stuff. Literal turf wars can erupt! The pernicious invader has taken root in several locations within the Baltimore Woods corridor while the Friends and partners seek ways to remove it. The plant’s tendency to produce numerous tiny tubers makes that a challenge. Italian arum is a nonnative perennial that was originally introduced as an ornamental plant. It has now naturalized in the Portland area. Due to it establishing in riparian areas and other habitats, its toxicity, and being very difficult to control…

A Poem by Sebastian Valle Mellman I soar up into the sky. I look down without a sound And I see the world below me. And down far below me is a lake And in that lake I see a bird A bird of prey. I let out the cry of a hawk. As I approach I see a bird That has gone astray from The flock, I extend my talons And get the bird by surprise I swiftly fly back up and secure My grip on the bird I go back to my nest and As I get there I hear the shrill Cries of my babies. Tomorrow I…

Among the most consistently seen wildlife in Baltimore Woods are birds of prey. The Sharp Shinned hawk is one species you might not be as familiar with. It is a small hawk that prefers woodlands, thickets and edge habitats although it has adapted to urban areas where prey is plentiful. This quintessential woodland predator is a “perch and scan” hunter according to wildlife biologists. They sit quietly on a tree branch and swoop in when a meal comes within striking distance. Its prey are mostly birds of about sparrow size up to robin size, sometimes up to the size of quail. It also eats small numbers of rodents, bats, squirrels,…

Incredibly, spring is here, so its a great time to activate your gardening dreams. Fortunately, Friends of Baltimore Woods has a “Brigadoon-like” annual native plant sale in St. Johns in partnership with the pop-up, Sparrowhawk Native Plant Nursery. Online pre-ordering has ended, but If you missed the deadline, or if you simply want more plants, the flash sale is a fun way to score some lovely odds and ends for your habitat garden. Sparrowhawk sells off a small amount of overstock at liquidated prices at the end of the pop up sale. The flash sale will start at 3:30pm on Saturday, April 2 at the pick up site, the corner…

The Baltimore Woods has a new local ally tucked into Green Anchors, the eco-industrial park just north of Cathedral Park. What appears from the street to be a tumble of tiny houses, cranes, steel containers and quonsets, holds a hidden gem of riverfront gardens, buzzing beehives and a small nursery run by local nonprofit, Rewild Portland. Rewild Portland headquartered at Green Anchors in fall 2020, buying a 30 x 95 ft high tunnel greenhouse built on site in 2018 by landscape designer and artist Scott Sutton to grow plants for restoration of the former brownfield site on which Green Anchors sits. Rewild Portland’s mission is to build community resilience through…

On Thursday, Dec. 9, SOLVE and FoBW partnered to host a private team-building work party in the meadow for employees of New Relic, a Portland-based software company. In spite of cold, damp weather, the mostly home-based employees applied themselves enthusiastically to one or more of several different activities and had fun working in community. In fact, recently hired employees had their first opportunity to meet their coworkers due to the current requirement to work from home. The volunteers removed all the remaining prickly lettuce in the upper meadow in record time, while another group cut blackberry vines off native shrubs in the upper woodland. A third group planted 35 meadow…