The new home of the Twins, with north towards the top/right.

The start of a new era in baseball in Minnesota is a few days away.  Fans will arrive at the new outdoor stadium in a variety of ways, including by bike.  Many will come via the Cedar Lake Trail from the west.  The trail route, present and the future route through downtown to the Mississippi River, is visible above as the blue line that runs diagonally from upper left to lower right.

The Cedar Lake Trail corridor passes under the stadium for approximately 750 feet.  On the east end, it runs alongside the platforms of the new multimodal transit station, which already serves the Northstar commuter rail line and the Hiawatha LRT.

In 1996,  six native Red Cedar trees were planted with great ceremony in the Heart of the Park.  The next year, volunteers planted 60 more. The idea of the memorial Cedar Grove was to honor people by allowing their loved ones to purchase a tree.  Each tree represented the honoring or memorial of a cherished individual in the donors’  life.

The plantings were laid out on a double spiral from the center, the heart,  one quarter-turn apart.  Students and faculty from Dunwoody Institute helped with the engineering.  The late nursuryman Clark Batho, a friend of Cedar Lake Park supplied the trees, and dug the holes.

Young people from Hennepin County Sentence to Serve passed many hours of community service time laying a deep 5-feet wide corridor of wood chips along the spiral lines.  This allows for an easier walk.

The spirals of the Cedar Grove are visible from the air. Also, there are lines that can be seen that  represent the solstice sunrise/sunset, and the cardinal points.  These comprise the henge, or astronomical calendar, that has been created in the grove.

All are in alignment from the center, the Heart of the Park.  There are GPS  coordinates going out 40 miles, bringing these spirals east into Wisconsin, north through Anoka, west to Cokato, and south into Lakeville.  In the photo above, notice that the grove happens to be in the center of a pyramid.  These lines were service roads when BNSF railroad used the land as a maintenance and switching yard.  Now, these gravel paths are part of the secondary circulation in the park.

Celebrate the Return of the Light.

Cedar Lake Trail west

One of my favorites is a native-species flower that CLPA volunteers have planted over the years: Lead plant. It has small, delicate oval leaves and a spike-like mass of deep-purple flowers along the uper two to seven inches of the plant.

As always, please enjoy them, but leave them in peace for others to enjoy too!

What makes invasives “invasive” is that they put out so much seed material
than the native plants  that they can easily outcompete any of the natural
plants.  And much of this seed material is viable in the soil for several
years!

Am more encouraged some days than others.  Was over in the conservation area
near Burnham Bridge this afternoon  with Meredith Montgomery, showing her
the invasives and some of the good stuff that is starting to thrive — many
baby oaks, cedars, much sumac — now that it has been freed from the
buckthorn.

The herbaceous plants — the garlic mustard, motherwort, burdock, European
bell flower — are an even bigger challenge now that the seed material is
being exposed to the sun, something that wasn’t happening when there was
“only buckthorn”!

Yea for all the help you and your neighbors can render!

Ruth

Talked with four young people today at the site who are interested in this
ongoing work and have expressed willingness to help, particularly with the
buckthorn the garlic mustard, which they can now easily identify.  This is
the kind of thing that is really encouraging.