If you live south of the ship canal in the Seattle area, you're drinking water comes from the Cedar River and is impacted by its watershed. A bit downstream of the spot our drinking water is pulled from, we worked in the Cavanaugh Pond Natural Area with King County Parks, to hand-water a riverside native planting.
The kids were thrilled to be assigned water-wading in the mellow river which was running low due to the snow drought. We enjoyed a short naturalist talk about the importance of vegetated, gravel habitat in the salmon's lifecycle. And also the importance of cool water, which is a challenge in low-flow years. The heavy-lifting work, hauling buckets from the river to the young snowberries, cedars, maples, willows and roses helps to establish a healthy forest that will provide many benefits to the riverine ecosystem- shade, insects, water-filtration, erosion control, woody debris, etc.
Some work battling blackberries was accomplished also, as this site used to be a gigantic noxious thicket; which would grow back without consistent stewardship. Needless to say, we all enjoyed the cool river play after a hot afternoon's efforts. Lovely and very fun!