One small portion of where the action happened.

Sorry, the title is a bit over the top, but titles should be dramatic, or at least evocative, I assert. In reality, it is the end of invasive broom this season. We will likely need to return to the big patch I removed recently in subsequent years, with vigilance and due diligence. But at least, for now, it’s gone. This is the first time this has happened on the Sonoma Overlook Trail property.  The Montini Preserve has never had broom, as far as we can determine.

Accomplishing this took several weeks of effort, an hour almost every day. I even began to get a repetitive stress injury from pulling too much with my right arm, and had to back off a bit. Pulling broom is harder than pulling thistle — so much harder that I had to buy a special tool to pull the largest plants. Called the “Weed Wrench” (see photo to the left), it is a rather imposing chunk of metal that mechanically allows you to grip the broom at its base and lever it from the ground. Although they call the one I bought their “light” version, I think it could be designed to be a lot lighter than it is. But whatever, at least it works.

One day, when doing this work, I returned to my car to discover I was without my keys — they had fallen from my pocket as I was pulling. I had to go  retrace my steps at least three times, from my car to the patch, around the patch and back, before I finally saw a sparkle in the forest duff from the tiny, bright green flashlight on my keychain. I was grateful.

I’m also grateful that we are making significant progress on fighting invasive species on these properties. We are winning, as every year it gets better. We are still far from the end, but I think I’m beginning to at least see that it’s possible to win. For a number of years, I had to take it only on faith. Now I have experience and a sense of surety. We can do this. I know we can.