Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Long Live Earth Day

Today is April 22–Earth Day–so I thought I would make an Earth Day-inspired post. One of the things I look forward to each spring is seeing my flowering dogwood tree in full bloom. I got this little dogwood tree in fourth grade for Arbor Day (do they still give Arbor Day trees to school kids?). It was little more than a stick with some roots when I got it, but we planted it in the backyard, and 20 years later it's still alive! Dogwood trees are relatively small trees, unlike my sister Chandra's Arbor Day tree–a bald cypress–which is taller than our two-story house, even though it is several years "younger" than my dogwood tree. Bald cypress trees just grow a lot faster.

Here's my little dogwood tree. I think it's interesting that the dogwood's blossoms start out small and green, and then they get a little bigger and whiter every day until the tree is covered with big, white flowers. I should've had my mom take a picture of my tree when it first started budding this season, but I didn't. Here's a picture of the tree just a day or two before the picture below it:
Even though my dogwood is a relatively small tree, I think it looks deceptively small in the pictures (and almost like a bush)…SO, I'm including some pictures of my mom and sister in front of the tree, to give some perspective as to the tree's actual size:
I wish my dogwood tree were one of the pink ones. There are several of those in my neighborhood, and they are even more gorgeous than the white ones. Here's a picture from Google of one of the pink dogwoods:
Happy Earth Day! Be kind to her (the earth) and each other!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love those pink ogwoods trees too. There is a house in my neighborhood that has both in their front yard. I would want to plant the same when me and my fiance find a new place. I received a redbud for my Arbor day tree in 3rd grade. It was beautiful, they grow the purple flowers on them in spring. It grew to be good size. My sister took it out of the front yard when she took over renting my parents house. Oh well, I planted another on in my yard now about two years ago, so I will be excited to watch this one grow. One thing I plan to do to honor the earth when I pass away is; instead of being preserved and buried under a tombstone. I would love to be cremated and placed in a decomposing pot with a tree seed in it and planted so that I could fertilize the growth of a healthy tree. The way I see it is if people were to plant trees when they die instead of tombstones we would have a greener planet and it wouldnt continue to cover with concrete. Hopefully that doesnt sound too judgemental if you choose to have a tombstone, I just want my children amd my childrens children to remember trees and not their ancestor Sebra's remains that will wither away with erosion anyway, no one will know who I am as a tombstone. What if there was a little plaque next to it even saying "here grows Sebra". How beautiful graveyards would be if they were all trees..! You would be walking in a sacred forest..! I just think that would be absolutely beautiful. :)

Anonymous said...

Sorry that last comment was anonymous. I didnt know what link to put in. I was putting my email in but it didnt work. This is Sebra Gagnon.

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