ELM REPORT – SEPTEMBER 2024 NEWSLETTER
Some good news just arrived from the City Newsroom! We have graduated to Stage 1 water restrictions; our home turf and gardens may survive after all with an additional hour of sprinkler use per week! In the meantime, it has been a great learning experience to see how we can save and reuse water for our gardens and perhaps we can continue to do so!
A huge thank you to Foothills Landscaping for keeping the flowers in our community looking amazing despite the water restrictions! Also, hats off for all of the Foothills employees for working so hard during this persistent hot weather! The ailing vines in some of our planters have been replaced with a variety of trailing annuals and it actually is a great opportunity to test out different plants and see where different varieties fare best!
Because of the extraordinary hot temperatures, some activities such as transplanting and pruning have been postponed until cooler temperatures presumably arrive near the end of summer. This includes pruning, as the shrubs are already stressed due to the hot weather.
A big thank you to the great group of volunteers who came out in the hot weather on July 9th to pull weeds in the naturalization pilot area on the northeast corner of Edgevalley Drive and Edgemont Boulevard near the ECC. A couple of enthusiastic representatives from the city were there to help out and guide our volunteers through the process of what to pull and what to leave! We are grateful to the city of Calgary for providing equipment, water and sunscreen. We are not quite done yet with this project and are planning with the city for one more weed pulling session, probably in September, prior to planting in October! As soon as the dates are confirmed, we will publish them on the ECA website. Interested in helping us out with this project? Email us at [email protected] or contact the ECA Volunteers group via email at [email protected] to receive emails regarding upcoming dates for this project.
On a different note, have you noticed some insects in your yard lately that you don’t immediately recognize? Chances are that they are ladybugs in different stages of their lifecycle. Our ELM coordinator, Shari Pitka, provided a very informative article about ladybugs including pictures of their various stages of development. The article has been posted on our website and social media channels.
Have a great summer and please contact us at [email protected] with any concerns or questions.
Kathleen Stewart, Rick Wierzbicki, Shari Pitka
