I remember a sky that turned purple at night instead of black; leaf shadows dappling the concrete from street trees as I walked to school in the morning alongside lanes bustling with cars. Growing up in the city, nature was all around me—and yet it was obscured. It was nothing short of an imaginative act to envision the soil beneath the pavement I walked each day, water beneath the soil. 

“And now, the moment of truth… Will we see water at Terman today?!” How frequently this question has crossed my mind in the past three years as we prepared to visit Adobe Creek at Terman Middle School in Palo Alto, one of our most notoriously dry locations for water quality monitoring. Ever since we began our Palo Alto water quality monitoring program in December of 2013--right in the middle of the drought-ridden, sun-soaked winter--we have played this guessing game.

Last month, Grassroots Ecology staff and community members explored Byrne Preserve at night, viewing the oak woodland for the first time in the ultraviolet spectrum. We carried small ultraviolet flashlights that allowed us to examine the world that we cannot see with the naked eye. 

Late summer in the native plant garden teaches us to appreciate subtlety and quietude. While some may look at these natural landscapes as dead or brown, we see an important function and structure to provide habitat to insects, lizards, and birds feeding on the senescing flowers and seedheads.

Each June, some serious number crunching happens at Grassroots Ecology. It’s the end of our fiscal year, which means that it’s time for our staff to look over all our records from the past 12 months, to see the extent of our collective impact.

Earlier this month, we announced that the Acterra Stewardship program is now an independent, fiscally sponsored project of Acterra: Action for a Healthy Planet. As part of this transition, we want to start broadening our connection to the local community through social media (Instagram and Facebook), as well as this blog. The Eco Roots blog will give a behind-the-scenes look at our work and what inspires us to improve the habitat of California’s native ecosystems.