Click on the image for a full-sized version of the award (and pat yourself on the back while you are at it).

The award is for “Best Green Community Project”, in recognition of our efforts to plant nearly 100 trees, plus the landscaping, planter boxes and maintenance of the greening initiatives.  We were selected from other candidate projects citywide.

This great news arrived on the heels of last month’s neighborhood improvement award, which we just received from SF Beautiful in October.

Thanks so much to all of you.  With your tireless efforts to continue transforming our little part of SOMA, this is a wonderful affirmation of what can happen when a neighborhood pulls together to make it a better place for our residents and local businesses.

Congratulations to all of our neighbors and local businesses for your efforts and continued perseverance, especially during these ‘interesting’ times.   It takes a lot to keep plugging away when there is so much uncertainty in the world, but the fact that so many of you are committed says a quite a bit about the momentum established for and potential of our area.

So, great job and let’s hope that with further improvement, it’s the first of many.

This month, we’ll be discussing the work to date on the Janitorial contracts on the 400 blocks of Tehama and Clementina, recent security concerns and our Fall fund raiser as well as a few other issues.

PLEASE pass this along to your neighbors and HOAs to post. And please try to bring at least 1 new person to the meeting.

So, Mary Scholten and Joel Smith got together with Clark de Mornay, who works for Flora Grub, a garden supply store way South of Market, almost to HuntersPoint/Bayview. Clark ordered the plants and got us a tremendous deal.   Be sure to check out Flora Grubb the next time you have gardening or plant needs – it’s a really cool place and they’re supporting our neighborhood. Their site is: www.floragrubb.com.

Mary and Joel purchased some gardening tools (shovels, hand spades, buckets, gloves, etc.) but others brought shovels or hand tool as well.  Ethan, our new neighbor in Hugh Thatcher’s apartment helped out. Paul Lamb of Rocket Postcards helped out, as did Laura and her children. Brian Wallace and Betty Marshall, and of course, old reliable Foster Weeks provides additional muscle. There’s no stopping that guy.

We met at 469 Tehama at 9 a.m., drank lots of coffee and ate plenty of donuts. Betty supplied home-baked muffins. Then, half of us headed down to 5th street where we started the plantings, and half headed towards 6th Street.

The before and after photos show the dramatic results.  THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to make this possible.

This month, we will be discussing the current janitorial contract on the 400 blocks of Clementina and Tehama, an upcoming beautification project and the launch of our new web site. We will also have discussion on issues facing us in the coming year.

For additional info and a lot of photos…

We painted the mural on the Tehama St. face of the AT&T Wireless building at 951 Howard St. as a means of neighborhood beautification and community enhancement.  AT&T sponsored the mural entitled “Slow Down: Children at Play,” and features the faces of neighborhood children (and pets!) intertwined with forms that reference the shadows from the trees and architecture of the street.

For a lot more information on the mural please see the very first article at the bottom of on our news page.

Matt Drake and Brian Wallace led the charge at 7am, doing the heavy lifting and grunting when the trees were delivered to our friends over at ClementinaSF.  Without John Dunlap’s tireless efforts, our streets would be far more barren than they are today.

The turnout was fantastic last weekend – we had about 8 volunteers per tree, so it was really great to see that everyone is still so motivated to improve our neighborhood.  Special thanks to Tami and the good folks at Luscious Garage for opening their doors to us (for the second year in a row) and hosting the post-planting potluck when we wrapped up at noon!

SoMa Tree Planting: Saturday, May 9th

8:00 AM Meet at Clementina & Sumner Streets just off 8th Street.

Coffee & sign in. Pickup trucks distribute trees; non-drivers assemble light hardware.

9:00 AM Volunteers arrive.

9:15 AM Planting demonstration.

9:30 AM We break into small groups & start planting trees.

12:30 PM We regroup at the Luscious Garage** 459 Clementina Street for the potluck.

Please be sure to invite your neighbors, HOA board members and local contacts who may be interested.  This meeting will focus on the issues we will focus on over the rest of this year.

See you there!