Service Saturday

Today’s service project through Tree People was planting 30 shade trees in a local neighborhood (I have finally learned my lesson that I can no longer participate in any mountain-based projects or face the repercussions of full-body poison ivy again…) and while I was a little fussy about the fact that we were planting trees in one of the most well-off neighborhoods in the valley, (with an impressive most-likely Earth Day related turn out of volunteers) it was explained that anyone can have this type of event organized, it just requires a little community coordination. (Interesting note, met a girl who grew up one town over from where I grew up and went to the same college as I did, both on the east coast…small world) I was also skeptical of the over-eager event leader’s claim that it is a scientific fact that when you give a tree a name it has a better chance of growing healthier, something I was not about to buy into at 9am on a Saturday morning. But scientific proof pending, I did notice how quickly the local residents got into naming the trees near their properties. A man who had to be about 85 or 90 came out in his wheelchair and watched us work and promptly named his nearby tree “Gloria”. Another family named the 3 on their curb “Kelly”, “Ralph” and “Ginger” after dogs that had passed on. And another resident christened “Dwayne”, after Dwayne Allman, of course. I know I’ll be driving by in the future, especially to check up on Gloria, because that hole was a real bitch to dig.