Poison oak.

Today I finished inspecting all of the maintained trails of the Sonoma Overlook Trail and Montini Preserve properties. As of today, the trails are clear of Italian thistle and poison oak to about three feet away from the trail. We achieved this milestone more than two months earlier than last season, which now means we can move on to other tasks and goals in our Vegetation Management Program. Trailside can now be moved to “maintenance” status from “attack,” which means we will need to continually check and monitor the trails, as new thistle comes in all the time, and poison oak keeps growing, of course, but we will now begin attacking other areas.

This essentially means a couple tasks: 1) continuing to push Italian thistle away from the trail, and perhaps eradicating it completely in some areas, and 2) being opportunistic in attacking patches that are in danger of furthering the spread of thistle on both properties. In general, the Overlook is in better shape than the Montini, so typically I spend more time on the Montini, although my goal this year is to eradicate thistle from some specific areas on the Overlook where it appears we have a chance to completely eradicate it.

Be sure to let me know if you want to help with this exciting (haha) work!