Welcome to the Milwood Neighborhood Association - Austin, Texas 78727

It’s My Park Day is a little earlier this year, so we’ve been busy planning activities to improve our Balcones District Park.  Plans so far include trash pick-up, clearing brush and limbs from the hiking path, better defining the creek bed path in certain places, and careful removal of invasive, non-native plants.

To sign up as a volunteer, click here.  Bring the kids and dogs and join your neighbors in helping to keep our park clean and in great shape!

If you have any questions about the event, or suggestions on improvement ideas, please contact us.

On Saturday April 12th, 35 volunteers came out from Milwood, Walnut Crossing and across Austin for It’s My Park Day at Balcones District Park.

Our team picked up a truck load of trash, painted over 10 picnic tables, and weeded and painted the horseshoe pit. Not only was this a great effort for keeping Balcones District Park beautiful, it was also a great way to connect with neighbors and friends of the park.

Pictured to the left is one of the many cleaned and painted picnic tables giving the kids who scratch their names and other messages a clean slate!

With It’s My Park Day right around the corner (this Saturday, April 12th), we wanted to let you know what we will be doing at your Balcones District Park.  Here are the projects we will be doing:

• General Park and Trail Pickup
• Clean and paint 10 picnic tables and 3 grills
• Fixing up the horseshoe pit near the front of the park (weeding, turning the dirt over in them, and painting the back drops)
• Any other ideas?  If so, please send us an email and let us know

We still have room for more people to help out so if you are interested and able, please sign up at the It’s My Park Day website.  Did we mention that if you sign up you get an organically made T-Shirt? We will kick everything off at 10am and should be done by 1pm at the latest.  We hope to see you there!

Our fourth annual workday in the park. Let’s work together to keep our neighborhood park looking great. As we get closer to the date we’ll post more information.

If you are are interested in helping please sign up so we can get an idea of how many people we will have coming out.

If you also have some suggestions as to items you believe might be helpful to work on, please feel free let us know.

Last Saturday for It’s My Park Day we had 40+ people, with lots of neighborhood people and two large groups from a high school group and the local UVA alumni group.

One major accomplishments were filling and cementing an extremely large hole in the trail by the waterfall that was pretty dangerous if you came over the hill not knowing it was there.

The picture to the right is one of two water diversion projects done to improve creek flow during floods. The trail was overwashing in two significant areas making the area impassable after rains.

Thanks to all who came out!

It’s My Park Day is on Saturday at 10:30. We’ll meet at the kid’s play area. If you have not signed up already please do, it is how we keep track of numbers for supplies and shirts and that sort of thing.

As previously mentioned, the main project this year will be down in the trails, clearing flood debris and doing some trail maintenance. Two sections of the trail are substantially flooded over from the creek jumping its bed. I don’t have any idea how long it will take or how many people it will take, we’ll find out together! Also there are some projects to clear brush and trees that are overgrowing the path.

There will be some supplies, snacks and water. Please bring your own of anything you want. We got a question about ordering food – If they will bring it to the park, order away. Questions? Please contact us.

I’m posting via the Treo while touring the work site (partially to see if I can) for it’s my park day for a list of the needed work. Projects include:

Removing hackberry tree fallen on path
Cutting cedar limb at head level across path
Filling large hole on path by the waterfall
Removing flood debris gathered that is causing river to flood path – two spots.

Observations
Need shovels, saws, probably a couple of wheelbarrows
Lots of poison ivy already
Probably a year away from largescale resurfacing and trail connection
It’s nice to see water coming over the little waterfall again.

Our third annual workday in the Park is coming on April 14. We’ll have two projects this year! We’ll meet at at the children’s play area in the park off of the main parking lot at 10:30 am.

For those who want something light, or with small children, we’ll do litter pickup using the kid’s play area as a jumping off point.

This year we’ve also been asked to take on a slightly bigger project than in years past- Streambed clearing at Balcones Park nature trail.

We’ll be moving rock and debris out of the creek and using it to protect sensitive cliff-side areas. In some areas, the creek has gotten so full of rubble and brush, it can no longer flow down its course and has flooded the trail instead. This, in turn, drives walkers to tread on sensitive plant life growing alongside the trail. We’ll try to help out with both issues by clearing the creek. There will also be some trash cleanup to be done. Bring a shovel and work gloves, if you have them. If there is water in the creek, expect to get wet! Wear water shoes. For questions, please fill out the contact form to the right

Signup Link