On Saturday, June 26, Allied Gardens Community Council representative Kim Morris and Friends of Navajo Canyon joined San Diego Canyonlands in the first native habitat restoration volunteer event of 2021. City Council member Raul Campillo, Anothony Hacket of his staff, and City Parks Senior Ranger Tiffany Swiderski were also part of the team.

They pulled invasive mustard plants and horehound plants and extracted 10 large contractor trash bags of the non-native species from Navajo Canyon. The volunteers also trimmed up the trail, picked up trash, and cut back overgrown ice plant.

We invite you to the next Friends of Navajo Canyon event — an interpretive hike with a San Diego Canyonlands restoration expert on Thursday, July 29, 5–7 p.m. — to learn more about the native plants and animals that live in our canyon. We will also host another habitat restoration volunteer event in July.

Visit our website to learn more and join the friends of Navajo Canyon mailing list, aggccouncil.org/FriendsOfNavajoCanyon. There is so very much more that needs to be said about community participation in this important work, more than we can address here. Even if you cannot join us as a physical presence in the canyon, you can join the Navajo Canyon Friends Group to let our elected representatives know how important the canyon is to their constituency.

We support the Allied Community Gardens by forwarding their newsletter, most recently the Summer 2021 edition, to the folks on our contact list and on our website (“Community Projects” then “Allied Community Gardens”).

The Gardens are always putting something new in the ground, most recently a pumpkin patch with 32 starts. In a few weeks, they will bring the preschool kids over to introduce them to their patch. The goal is that each of the kids will have their own pumpkin in the fall. Pumpkin pie and jack-o-lanterns for everyone! Check out the Gardens on their Facebook page at Allied Community Gardens and make direct contact with them at [email protected].

Our July 27 Town Hall Meeting will focus on the 500 Trees in Allied Gardens East Project. Please plan on attending the meeting to learn more about this valuable ecological work. To receive notice of the meeting you will have to be on our contact list. See below.

Our Sept. 28 Town Hall Meeting will be directed to the new compostable materials recycling program that will be initiated in the near future. We are working with the city on the presentation and will have more information for you soon.

We do our best to support the activities of important organizations such as Benjamin Library, San Diego Canyonlands, Allied Community Gardens, Beyond Leashes Dog Park, Navajo Community Planners, Inc., and others when we forward their newsletters and their meeting agendas to the members of our every growing contact list. We hope that his kind of communication will be a further incentive for each of our Mission Times Courier readers to sign up, as indicated below, for our emails.

Use the “Contact Us” page at aggccouncil.org to get on our email contact list to receive notices of community activities and organizations. And, of greater importance, to let us know how we can help you support our neighborhood. Our next board meeting will be on Monday, Aug. 2 at 6:30 p.m. by Zoom. The public is encouraged to attend.

— By Shain Haug, president of the Allied Gardens Grantville Community Council.