Recently, my dad and I drove to Glendale to visit the Sunshine Preserve. It is a wildlife passageway for apex predators such as bobcats and mountain lions, and also pollinators like bees and Monarch butterflies, through the San Gabriel Mountains. Volunteers from the Sunshine Preserve have planted native plants all along the hills and roads up in the preserve. I don’t know exactly how big it is but from the base of the hill where we volunteered, it looked pretty big. Volunteers also made passageways in the hills and cleared flammable non-native grasses from the hills.

We went to check it out and volunteer and it was much more meaningful that I thought. We found that it was really well organized and that it was a very good community. We met Chris Smee, the director of the Sunshine Preserve, and his helper, Haly, and they gave us directions on how to help them out. Most of the time, we were watering their huge California Native garden, and pulling weeds on the ground and in the hills. It was surprisingly hard climbing up and down the hills, but I think it would have been easier if we weren’t carrying heavy watering cans. They had monkey flowers, yarrow, manzanita, white sage, toyon, oaks, and so many other natives that all looked so pretty together.