by Joe Cross, Facilities Manager
Celebrating Earth Day has become a now 50+ year occasion. And while it is hard to believe, WUU is now in its 25th year in our present building. We celebrated by having a work day to spruce up the campus lest we pine away nurturing only weeds (bad pun intended).
Covid-19 restrictions limited participation, but we still had fourteen members celebrate by removing brush, weeds, and volunteer trees. Work actually began a week earlier when Julie and Franz Gross restored the flower and herb garden in the playground area. Our Ironbound Road clean-up team removed roadside litter, a second group headed by Fred Bergmann ran the weed wacker brigade, and a third led by Les Solomon weeded and re-mulched the planting beds.
Virtually no work had been done on the landscape since the new addition was completed in 2016. Since that time, our plant community has thrived and requires trimming, like a haircut. The results are spectacular.
Part of the trimming required pruning and outright removal of overgrown and dead plant materials. These have been left in piles around the campus until we can get a chipper to create and recycle our own mulch.
As spring progresses (and hopefully Covid-19 regresses), we will have another clean-up day to focus on these brush piles and the woods area behind the building and around the Memorial Garden.
