Skip to main content

P is for "Planting Trees"



Remember my post on our unit study of The Lorax? At the end of that post I told you that we had joined The Arbor Day Foundation for $10. We were to receive 10 trees (we chose the Wild Bird Variety) in exchange for our membership fee. I wanted Brynne to experience how planting these tiny "twigs" could make such a huge difference in our world. Those trees arrived a few weeks ago, and we planted them in several places in our yard.



We received the following varieties of trees:

Two Arrowwood Viburnums ~ "provides food, cover, and nesting sites for birds, larval food for butterflies and moths."

Bur Oak ~ "provides food and shelter for a wide variety of birds and animal life."

Gray Dogwood ~ "provides food, cover, and nesting sites for birds and squirrels."

Northern Red Oak

River Birch

Sargent Crabapple ~ "Birds love the fruit."

Tuliptree ~ "Squirrel and birds eat the seeds. The flowers are a favorite of the ruby throated hummingbird."

Washington Hawthorn

Colorado Blue Spruce




I can happily report that 7 of the 10 trees have survived the planting and are budding new leaves. It is so fun to see these babies grow and know that someday they will be full-grown trees.

A few days ago our neighbors had three young trees planted in their yard. They are 10 feet tall or so and fully bloomed. Those trees are nice, I guess. But there is something so special to me about watching these little bitty twigs we have planted grow into mature trees. It makes me feel like we are a part of something important. Sure we could have ordered some trees to be planted in our yard by the nursery. But that wasn't the point to me.

Make a difference to your surroundings and to our world.


We are linking up with Marcy at Ben and Me for Blogging Through the Alphabet.

Comments

  1. When I was a little girl we planted a red maple tree, each year we would take pictures of it with either may dad or me with our hand over the top to show how much it grew, it grew into a beautiful tree - I tell you after my Dad died and my brother and I sold Dad's house it was so sad leaving behind that tree.
    Best of luck wih the baby trees : )

    ReplyDelete
  2. We've been Arbor Day foundation members for many years and I don't think we've ever had a 70% survival rate on the trees we've planted! LOL But we do have some that are still growing. I wish we had lots more big trees on our lot - maybe by the time I have grandkids. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. We added two more trees to our back yard this year. I am babying them right now because I don't want the heat to wipe them out!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

We all know that in this crazy world of homeschooling, we need all the (adult) support we can get. Please leave a comment if you so wish!

Popular posts from this blog

ABCya

Eli's reading resource teacher shared a website with me yesterday that I would like to pass along. It's called ABCya . There are separate educational sections with fantastic games for ages kindergarten through 5th grade. I browsed the 2nd grade level, and it includes age-appropriate games about Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Geometry, Patterns, Mouse Manipulation, Art and Holiday games. There are lots and lots of fun and creative games for children to play. They are fun, but oh, so educational. Eli's favorite, in his short time playing it, was Create a Car . A lot of the games also have Apps available for purchase (99 cents for most of them) for the iPad and iPhone. I have been looking for another free website for games similar to Starfall , for some time. I think I have found it. I can feel confident having Eli and Brynne play these games.

Cells ~ It's What's for Dinner

Dawson made edible cells on Friday. He made an animal cell pizza ... and a plant cell chocolate chip cookie ... He reviewed what he's learned about cells the past two weeks, and I had dinner made by someone else. Win, win!! I am linking up at Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.

Last Child in the Woods ~ Chapters 1-4

Welcome to our book study of Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. To be honest, I have no idea what this "study" is going to look like. I imagine that when we get together I will post about all of the things that caught my eye. And I would ask that you leave a comment, or a link to your own blog post in the comment, about what caught yours. This isn't anything formal, ladies, just a place to talk about what we have read. I have now read the first four chapters of Last Child in the Woods two times. It is just so good. Several things have specifically hit me deep, but in general I just realized that "times, they are a changin'." Things aren't the way they were when we were kids. Chapter 1. Gifts of Nature ~ "When I see birches bend to left and right ... I like to think some boy's been swinging them." ~ Robert Frost What is your definition of nature? What feelings, visions, senses does it conjure up? For me, it's not a