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.
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.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck wih the baby trees : )
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. ;-)
ReplyDeleteWe 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!
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