In August, we pulled weeds and picked up trash! A small but mighty group of dedicated volunteers.
And what a beautiful day it was, with bright yellow, white, and greens throughout the site!
In September, after a nature walk and super satisfying cottonwood seedling removal with a great crew …
…CPD stewardship coordinator extraordinaire Lucy surprised Alison with flowers in recognition of 10 years of volunteering at Rainbow Beach Dunes!
Volunteers got down and dirty to install native plants in the wetlands of the natural area. It was great to collaborate with the Honeycomb Project on this workday, and many thanks to our committed return volunteers. We couldn’t do this without you!
Spring may have officially sprung in Chicago, but it seems to keep recoiling amid wind, rain, snow, and cold. There were mighty waves along the shore on April 14 and practically no beach in front of the nature area!
Waves came up all the way to the marram grass, submerged the ephemeral wetland on the southeast end of the beach, and fully filled the swale.
But we had intrepid volunteers who came out despite the cold and wind! We found an owl pellet and noted that even the earliest flowerers (sand cress and bearberry) aren’t flowering yet.
Thanks to first time volunteers Sam and Bryan! Hope you come out again when the weather is better.
A small but mighty group of volunteers removed five bags full of sweet clover and other weedy invaders. It was a beautiful day and we remain so pleased with our efforts – just a few years ago sweet clover was a pernicious invader throughout the entire nature area. Now it takes only a few volunteers to spot check a few times a year to maintain a relatively sweet-clover-free zone (despite nearby source populations in the millions). This is success in urban land management!
A small but resilient group of volunteers collected 8 bags-full of trash on a windy and cold Saturday morning. Thank you for your dedication to RBD!
We also saw a juvenile bald eagle get harassed by gulls, lots of overwintering praying mantis egg cases, and a dead coyote.
Not much is blooming, but rosettes of the biennial beach wormwood (Artemisia campestris caudata) are definitely getting a headstart on the growing season!
Our last workday of 2016 was awesome – we planted 1000 marram grass stolons!* Our goal was to encourage native plants to colonize the area around the new water filtration system on the north side of the nature area.
We had tons of volunteers, but I didn’t get many photos– too busy digging holes and planting stolons.
Just a fraction of the volunteers who planted marram grass.
*What’s a stolon anyway?
Stolons are specialized stems that run horizontally just under the soil surface. We can cut them apart and plant them separately.
Late autumn is beautiful across the dunes!
Our May workday was a great one, including students from Gary Comer College Prep, members of the Rainbow Beach Park Advisory Council, and other volunteers. We got a lot of work done, pulling by hand the invasive cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum)Â from throughout the site.
On this May workday, we flagged and marked another 500 or so Opuntia individuals – we will collect data for these plants later in the season. We love when families come out to help at RBD! Kids of all ages have a great time in the nature area. 
We also saw an eastern kingbird and many native plants in bloom!
The Opuntia project is off to a great start. We are monitoring the native prickly pear population at RBD and have marked and collected data for more than 500 plants. (The population is estimated to be about 1500 plants.)
Many hands make light work, and our dedicated volunteers did a fantastic job in this first part of the project!
Lobelia spicata
For some folks, summertime means fireworks at the beach. Unfortunately, these can be damaging to plants and animals in the nature area, they leave a mess behind (that volunteers kindly clean up), and of course are illegal in Illinois.
BBQing is an awesome and fun thing to do in the park as well, but coals should be dumped in the red charcoal trash bins, not on trees or the beach.
Public service announcements aside, we had a great workday! Everyone felt very accomplished about the significant eradication of the white sweetclover.
The flowering plants at the Dunes are exploding this time of year. It’s very orange and yellow now. If you only visit Rainbow Beach Dunes once this year, I’d suggest going in the next couple weeks!
We had a great group at the Dunes last Saturday, on June 28: park neighbors, old friends, master gardeners, Chicago Cares volunteers.
We took a nature hike, and then went to work pulling weeds (cheatgrass) from between the cactus and little bluestem.
The tree on the edge of the parking lot is gone!
We sent our stewardship activities on winter break after our last workday of 2013, October 26.
Volunteers collected seeds from healthy little bluestem populations in the center of the nature area and dispersed them in the developing area on the east end.
We started up again just last weekend, with volunteers collecting 4 big bags of trash! We’re ready to start the year with a clean slate.
Autumn is a great time of year to collect seeds from native plants at the dunes because so many bloom in the summer time.
We’ve been collecting:
Dalea purpurea – purple prairie clover
Liatris aspera – rough blazing star
 
Monarda fistulosa – wild bergamot
Volunteers came from the South Shore neighborhood, Chicago Cares, Gary Comer College Prep, and elsewhere in Chicago.
We had a small but mighty group attacking the leading edge of the cheatgrass! Thanks to volunteers from Chicago Cares and CPD for their hard work.
We really attacked the cheatgrass, but the truth is we barely made a dent.
Nevertheless, our volunteers from Gary Comer and Chicago Cares had a blast!
Rainbow Beach Dunes 