The Friends of Patapsco Valley & Heritage Greenway sponsored a fall tree planting on Friday, October 28st! What a beautiful afternoon in the Orange Grove Area of Patapsco State Park, on the Grist Mill Trail which runs paralllel to the Patapsco River, close to Relay. With the help and assistance of the wonderful Patapsco State Park rangers, they helped us recycle some of the wood stakes and wire mesh cages to use for other trees in the park and brought a park truck to help us remove some trash we picked up along the way too! Thirteen wonderful volunteers helped us pull out weeds growing up the trees, trim tree limbs and readjust wooden stakes so trees that were previously planted will continue to grow along a riparian buffer off of a section of the Patapsco River that runs along the Grist Mill Trail! Special thanks to our Tree Captains Betsy McMillion, Tim Titus and Ranger Jamie Petrucci as well as all our other wonderful helpers that joined us to help nurture these trees providing an important buffer to this stream and picking up all that other trash that was washed down the river in this area from the September 7th Tropical Storm Lee! We spotted a large flock of black birds hanging around by our site, a beautiful blue heron and unfortunately, we saw a lot of plastic bags that were washed down the river and ended up on the trees after the water level went down. Some of the more interesting trash we removed that day include: A stack of Pokemon cards in a plastic zip lock bag, mini toy vehicles, pair of sunglasses, plastic toy policeman, toy detective badge, a steel locker from the railroad, 2 tires, basketballs, two decorative edging bricks, a Baltimore County Fire Department canoe paddle and lots of plastic bag pieces, as well as plastic and glass bottles!