Posted by: Erin Mittendorf

Hello to those of you still checking in on our blog, and thanks for reading! We’ve actually decided to stop posting for a while in lieu of focusing on our Twitter account. We’re developing a good dialogue over in the Twitter-verse by posting news links, restoration facts, and event updates for anyone to read.  You can follow us at http://www.twitter.com/stewardshipnet. For some reason, you can’t find us when you use the search bar in Twitter (we’re still working with them on fixing the issue), but the link above will take you right to our main page, which will show you all of our posts. We hope you’ll “follow” us there!

In the meantime, we’ll keep the blog open but we won’t be adding posts. Thanks again for your dedication following us, and be sure to check out our website at http://www.stewardshipnetwork.org to learn more about our organization and upcoming events!

Posted by: Mary Livesay

A few weeks back, Lisa forwarded a fantastic article to the staff at the Stewardship Network. We’d like to share it with all of you too: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/opinion/02kristof.html?_r=1&emc=eta1. The gist of the article is to encourage everyday people to access their local natural areas and promote caring for these areas. In this article the author is nostalgic for his a time when children explored the outdoors more and spent less time inside playing video games. The author encourages his readers to spend time “getting kids awed by nature.”

With the idea of “getting awed by nature” in mind I would like to encourage all readers of this blog to get outside tonight and enjoy the annual Perseid meteor shower. Peak viewing time for the meteor shower is late tonight and in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. So make a date with friends or family, pack a blanket and head out to an area away from the city lights to be awed by this amazing natural phenomenon.

For more information on the meteor shower: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090810-perseid-meteor-shower.html

Posted by: Meghan Hendricks

Did you know that the concept of a green roof isn’t really a new concept as the recent trend in green roof construction would have you believe? 

Green roof construction actually dates all the way back before Biblical times!

I get pretty geeked about history, so when I had it pointed out to me at our Green Roofs Workshop last Wednesday that green roofs actually date way back, I decided to do some of my own research…

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and one of the first extensive green roofs, were most likely built during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar in what now is Iraq.  More than 10 miles long, according to archeologists, this spectacular green roof was a structural marvel as much as an artistic one.

There are two ancient historians whose accounts of the gardens’ construction sound very similar to the modern day green roof concept.  Greek historian Strabo during the 1^st century BC said that “it consisted of vaulted terraces raised one above another and resting upon cube-shaped pillars.  These are hollow and filled with earth to allow trees of the largest size to be planted.  The pillars, the vaults, and terraces are constructed of baked brick and asphalt.”

In addition, the Greek historian Diodorus made his own account of the gardens also in the 1^st century BC.  “The Garden was 100 ft. long by 100 ft. wide and built up in tiers so that it resembled a theater.  Vaults had been constructed under the ascending terraces which carried the entire weight of the planted garden; the uppermost vault, which was seventy-five feet high, was the highest part of the garden, which, at this point was on the same level as the city walls.  The roofs of the vaults which supported the garden were constructed of stone beams some sixteen feet long, and over these were laid first a layer of reeds set in thick tar, then two courses of backed brick bonded by cement, and finally a covering of lead to prevent the moisture in the soil penetrating the roof.  On top of this roof enough topsoil was heaped to allow the biggest trees to take root.  The earth was leveled off and thickly planted with every kind of tree.  And since the galleries projected one beyond the other, where they were sunlit, they contained conduits for the water which was raised by pumps in great abundance from the river, though no one outside could see it being done.” 

The construction of the Hanging Gardens was pretty advanced for its time.  The accounts of the irrigation system are impressive considering now-a-days in the modern world people still struggle to conceptualize an irrigation system on their own roofs.  And, like the Taj Mahal, this ancient wonder was constructed because of a couple of love birds—King Nebuchadnezzar had the gardens constructed to lift the spirits of his sick wife.  

Not as fascinated with the aesthetics of green roofs as you are with their functionality? 

Well, the Scandinavians have been using green roofs for practical reasons for hundreds of years.  Limited resources and a rugged environment forced Scandinavians long ago to get creative with insulation.  Early methods simply used heavy timber, covered with birch bark for waterproofing, and topped with rolled out sod for insulation.² 

Hope you enjoyed this little History of Green Roofs 101.  When you are constructing your own green roof, take a minute to reflect on the fact that you are participating in something much bigger than just installing some greenery on your roof—you’re participating in a piece of history!

¹ “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_gardens_of_babylon
² http://www.ehow.com/facts_5189069_history-green-roofs.html

At the Stewardship Network office, it’s hard to forget that we’re close to nature all the time. We often have meetings at a picnic table behind the building or down by the Argo Park canoe livery on the Huron River, and our office has tall windows that look up and out into a bunch of oak and maple leaves. We also have a thin roof, and we’ve gotten accustomed to hearing the squirrels scampering around up there.

Yesterday, however, nature came in a little closer. While working away at our computers, Meghan and I heard a familiar-yet-slightly-different scrabbling from above.

“Squirrels?” Meghan asked. And then, on a little ledge a few inches from the ceiling above us, two little grey furballs ran back and forth squeaking. Yup, mice. To make matters worse, one pushed the other off the ledge and the little guy fell about a foot from Meghan’s head and took up cowering behind a file holder on our desk.

We tried chasing him, we tried luring him into a plastic tub with almonds so we could catch him and take him outside, but to no avail.  In the end, we lost him in the corner behind our boxes of old conference postcards. We hope the little guy made it outside. We’d also like to thank him for reminding us that nature is never too far away (and for the break from working!).

Posted by: Erin Mittendorf

Sorry for the long bout of radio silence on the blog. Lisa spent a week ailing at home, and Meghan and I were staffing the office ourselves. After that, I spent about a week up home, helping my sister with the details for her upcoming wedding in Suttons Bay.

It’s always great for me to get to spend some time with family where I grew up. Ann Arbor is great, but I miss Lake Michigan, birch trees, and dunes about as much as I miss my mom, dad and sister. To a smaller degree, it’s great just to check in on the backyard I grew up exploring. I managed to make a little time for that during the week, between tasting cakes and picking out flowers for the bridal bouquet.  The black raspberries should be ripe by the next time I visit in July. The red pines have finally muscled out the path my dad used to mow between the trees. The orange hawkweed I used to pick for my mom’s birthday bouquets, long before I knew its name or that it was invasive, still whips at my ankles like it does every year.

My dad pointed out all the autumn olive he wants to cut this fall and asked if there are any plans for a Stewardship Network Cluster in Northern Michigan.  

Yes and no. We’ve been talking with a lot of different areas about forming Clusters, including Northwest Michigan, and some are closer than others to having an organization in place to launch. Between the logistics and the funding, there will be no Northern Michigan Cluster this year.

We have now officially wrapped up the Need Water to Grow campaign, and we raised about $30,000. We greatly appreciate all of the support we found during the campaign, both in terms of money raised and morale boosted by all of the positive things people had to say about the Network.

Now we have the difficult task of figuring out to which of our many projects we should apply the money we’ve raised. We’re considering which of our new Clusters will launch this fall and which will wait for another day and another dollar. Given their stages of development, Mid-Michigan (which has already held events before its official launch) and Northern Indiana are the most likely candidates.

I’m looking forward to the day when we can launch our north and south Lakeplain Cluster spin-offs, the Waterloo Area Cluster, and a possible Northern Michigan Cluster. It would be great to have a work-related excuse to visit home.  

Though the campaign has finished up, we will continue posting to the blog about the happenings in the Stewardship Network office. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading, and that you’ll continue to do so!

Posted by: Mary Livesay (6/23/09)

Yesterday we kicked off a week-long webcast-a-thon where throughout this week different webcasts would be open to users free of charge. When I heard about this I thought that it was a great idea but didn’t think it was something that would be wildly popular. Boy was I wrong! After a day and a half of the webcast-a-thon we had reached our monthly quota of minutes accessing the site! So the staff was quickly able to up our minutes and all systems were a go for the webcast-a-thon.

This small example of the popularity of the free webcasts speaks volumes of the value of The Stewardship Network. I continue to be impressed at how valuable a resource the Network is and the amount of people that use it to educate themselves and reach out to other experts.

As a volunteer I have participated in several of our phone banks now and I am always impressed by the positive feedback I receive over the phone. Even when the caller isn’t in a position to donate they tell me that they’ll continue to volunteer and that they support the mission of the Stewardship Network and everything it stands for.

It’s pretty amazing how quickly things can change, and how seemingly small events can end up weaving some really important fabric in my life.  This revelation has hit me many times, and when I think about my experiences with the Stewardship Network and all of the amazing people I work with, I see it just one more time.

A few months ago, I came onto the now rapidly-growing team here to try and update and improve the membership system.  So Lisa, Erin and I sat down and talked over a lot of ideas, and slowly but surely figured out how the new system might work.  It seemed like a big job, but one that was definitely manageable (if I broke it up into small chunks at least).

As time went on, I slowly got involved with more and more aspects of the network.  Starting with small things like researching window stickers and membership cards, and moving my way into crafting webpages and creating a more interactive online space.  Then, I was working on the forum, or the Facebook page, or the cause page.  And the more I worked on, the happier I was… it turns out this is an amazing cause and group of people.

Then, at a staff retreat a little while ago, we talked about this campaign, a massive undertaking to raise $250,000.  Wow.  We tossed around more ideas, building as we always do on each other’s thoughts.  When it came time to decide who would coordinate this effort, there was a brief pause.  Everyone does so much – Lisa seems to work non-stop, and absolutely everyone gives everything they can in the way of time and expertise to the Network.  So, not really knowing how to do it, I volunteered to coordinate it.  I figured that jumping in headfirst would be the best way to learn, so why not?

So, now I spend a good amount of time attempting to coordinate and propel the campaign forward.  And you know what?  All of the amazing people around me have made it incredibly easy.  They’re all so ready and willing to jump in and help wherever they can, and to do whatever is necessary to reach our goal.  Like Meghan overcoming her fears and calling tons of people, or Erin following up on everything Need Water related while doing the 4,000 other things she works on.  Or people coming into phone banks from quite far away, taking time out of their very very limited free hours.

It’s amazing.  Working here is fantastic, and doing whatever I can to help its cause has been wonderful.  And I know that if a lot of people can do just a little, we can make it!

Brandon

Posted by: Jennifer Sharp

I started working at the Stewardship Network almost 2 months ago now. To be honest I didn’t know they existed until about a month before I started working. But I have been amazed with the work that happens here. I have learned so much by just sitting back and listening and being able to ask questions. Crazy amounts of work get done here each day. It always seems like a new project is coming up or someone has had a brilliant idea of a next step to improve the Network. Everyone here is so dedicated to the cause and to their jobs which I believe just makes this place thrive and be even more successful.

I got to learn a couple weeks back all about Garlic Mustard, including what is looks like, what is does to the environment and how easy it is to pull. I never realized that this plant that I see everywhere is so dangerous to our environment. I find myself looking for it now when I am outside. A few days ago, a whole group of college age or recently graduated kids got together to help pull together. It was a lot of fun and we got to help with the challenge and the environment at the same time.

We recently have launched our Need Water to Grow campaign, this is one of my first tastes of the ambitious dreams that come out of this Network. The dreams that I think have made this place what it is today. One of my major parts in the campaign was to put the Stewardship Network on Facebook. Now I am a college senior and have been using Facebook for years, so I thought this task would be no big deal. But as I started in on it I found all these different types of pages that I didn’t even know existed. Pages specially for businesses and other organizations. But we then stumbled along these pages called causes pages. This seems to fit what we wanted even better because it would allow us to accept donations!!! This opened up even more research that luckily Facebook made very easy to find. About how to create the page and what type of account you needed to be able to accept donations. It all came together and I have even been able to use this knowledge when working with other organizations.

I am impressed that there are two challenges/campaigns going on at the same time. We REALLY need your help with both! There is no way we can pull all the Garlic Mustard by yourself, and the Stewardship Network can’t continue to grow by itself. The Stewardship Network really needs your help financially so that we can continue to serve the Clusters, the environment and help new Clusters start! Thank you for all your support!

Posted by: Erin Mittendorf

The Stewardship Network office is starting to look like the den of a crazed conspiracy theorist. We’ve got giant post-its on the wall to scribble down ideas before we forget them; notes of encouragement we’ve received with peoples’ donations; a couple different calendars for our annual events, the Garlic Mustard Challenge and the Need Water to Grow Campaign; and personal reminders up the wazoo. Between so many big projects going on and nine separate people coming and going on different days of the week, there’s a lot of paper piling up around the office.

It’s great to have all the company, though. When I started working at the Stewardship Network last September, the only people who came into the office every day were Lisa and myself. Joan came in on Wednesday mornings and Meghan came in on the rare occasion that her class schedule allowed, but mostly it was quiet around the office.

And there was a lot of work! A month into the job, when I was still trying to figure out how to make copies, I helped run the ThrEE County Cluster Kick-off meeting. I had to explain the Stewardship Network to people when I didn’t feel like I understood it myself yet. By January, I was staying at the office with Lisa until 10:00 pm to finish the umpteenth round of edits on the Cluster brochures and secure the last minute-details for the annual conference at the same time!  

Now, between Lisa, Meghan, Erin, Ellen, Joan, Brandon, Jennifer, Mary and Megan T., the office cast is a little different every day. It’s incredible that so many wonderful and talented individuals have stumbled upon the Network and volunteered their time when the Network needs it the most. Without these people volunteering their time, there is no way we’d be able to undertake all the projects we are planning. I think that the cleanliness of the office is worth sacrificing for have such a great community of people working together towards increasing the capacity to care for the natural areas of the Great Lakes Region.

Posted by: Erin Mittendorf

I’ve been doing a little thinking about what you can get for $30, which is the minimum donation amount for Stewardship Network membership. I might be too young to reminisce about the good old days when you could get candy for a penny and a pay-phone call for a dime, but I am a twenty-two-year-old college graduate paying back student loans. I’d say I have a good appreciation for a dollar. After some personal reflection and a quick internet search, here’s what I’ve found you can get for $30.

• A month of my current (and severely underutilized) gym membership.|
• An Electronic Drum Kit shirt. It’s a shirt with a picture of a drum set on it, and the drums actually make noise when you tap them. I know a lot of drummers, but I don’t know how any of them would wash this shirt.
• A little more than 11 gallons of gas in Michigan.
• Just south of 26 gallons of gas in Michigan ten years ago.
• A Saw/Pruner Combo kit from Cabela’s. I’m sure they would work as well on young woody invasives as they do for removing branches that are in the way of your hunting blind.
• A two-pack of the “Lakeside Paisley Seat Pads” from Home Depot.
• Depending on where you live, approximately 7.5 boxes of Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies.
• Stewardship Network membership, which lasts for one year and comes with: discounted rates at our cost-associated workshops, one free workshop of your choice, and the knowledge that you’re supporting an invaluable networking organization promoting the health of Michigan’s native biodiversity.

I hope you’ll consider donating today, for yourself, in memory of a loved one, or as an upcoming Father’s Day gift!