Hoe-down throwdown: Line-dancing crew winning war against Mount Si Senior Center’s weeds

Published 4:01 pm Friday, September 14, 2012

Lynn Marion attacks weeds outside the Mount Si Senior Center, as part of an all-volunteer effort to clean up the building’s exterior.

It’s warming up fast outside, and about a dozen women are vigorously raking, pruning, trimming and cleaning up the grounds around the Mount Si Senior Center. They’re working so hard, you’d think they were getting paid, but the truth is just the reverse; many of them have sunk their own treasure, as well as time, into the the maintenance and beautification project.

So it’s a welcome relief for a couple of reasons when a car pulls in and the driver asks where she can put her donation, several bags of bark.

“Do you see this?!” asks Hazel Pownall with a bright smile. “This is how it happens!”

Pownall, clipboard in hand, makes sure to record the donation while the only male volunteer on hand today, Mark Ballantine, unloads the bark from the car. Most of the women hardly looked up from their work. They are torn away, reluctantly, to talk about their involvement in Project 15 and, with more enthusiasm, to lavish praise on their fellow volunteers.

Ballantine, said Barbara Touchette, “is one of those angels that just dropped down from heaven.”

Pownall is “our motivator,” all agreed.

And Lynn Marion is: “Our master gardener,” said Pownall; “our master of gardening,” corrected center Program Coordinator Paula Edwards; “our own Ciscoe,” said Ballantine; but not the person who started the project.

“It was Deane (Haugen),” said Marion, emphatically.

Haugen, a student of the senior center’s twice-weekly line dance classes, observed to some of her fellow dancers that the senior center’s grounds were in unprintably bad shape. “She said something like ‘it looks like heck,’” Marion said, “and she asked us to pull some weeds.”

The idea, about four weeks ago, was for each line dancer to pull 15 weeds whenever they visited the center, Marion explained. “So we started that, and it just snowballed.”

From 15 weeds, the line-dancing ladies, their volunteer work covered by the senior center’s insurance, expanded to weeding for 15 minutes, then to 15 areas, and so on. They’ve also recruited their partners, neighbors and friends to help and, because they’re out there every day, they’ve captured the attention of passers-by who’ve pitched in however they could.

“One day, they had a guy out here with a guitar, serenading them as they worked,” Edwards said.

It’s not just about looks, either, says Marion. Some of their first tasks were to clear out the overgrown areas used by staff members who come in early in the mornings, and around the nearby bus shelter, for safety’s sake.

“We didn’t want any places where someone could hide, or do anything (dangerous),” Marion said.

They’re not exactly advertising that fact, though, or the project in general. So far, the volunteers have relied on the conversational approach to bring in help and donations.

“Word of mouth around here does quite a bit!” explained Pat Warner.

Eventually, the ladies hope to find people or organizations to “adopt” various flower beds or sections, and commit to ongoing maintenance of them. Individually and as the line dancing group, they have adopted several areas, as have the local gardening club and Mount Si Yoga

“I think people really need to be aware that there’s no money from the senior center to take care of these things,” said Gloria Korsmo, a volunteer who’d spent enough time clearing one particular flower bed to feel both good, and bitter about it. In a later, unguarded moment, she said “I’d like to get my hands on the volunteer who planted the first vinca vine in that bed!”

All landscaping work and grounds maintenance at the senior center has been done by volunteers for years, Edwards said. The Project 15 group members—Haugen, Korsmo, Ballantine, Marion, Pownall and her husband John, Touchette and her partner Earl Finch, Warner, Lynn Eads, Gayle Wolff and Dean “Socks” Shepherd—contributed to the cleanup effort, as have a long list, maintained by Pownall, of people who’ve dropped in to help, some for as little as 15 minutes, some for entire days.

“Joan (Coey) refused to go home last night until she had that whole flowerbed just picture-perfect,” Pownall said.

Korsmo understood completely. “This has become a passion,” she said. “You just hate to go home until you’ve finished.”

Pat Warner agreed, but added, “Then I look at my garden at home, and I think I better get some work done there, too!”

Warner was the first to go back to work, because she had a limited amount of time that day, and others soon followed. They were quickly talking and trimming up a storm again.

“What a camaraderie of people we’re developing,” says Pownall, going down her list to make sure she hasn’t missed anyone. “We’ll be friends for life!”

Learn more about the Mount Si Senior Center at http://mtsi-seniorcenter.org.