Thinking about Trees for Arbor Day and Earth Day

Twenty five years ago, a young woman named Julia Hill climbed 200 feet into the top crown of a 1000 year old Coast Cedar tree to protest the looming logging of the tree. She stayed up there for over 700 days, some say two years until she reached a deal with Pacific Lumber Company to save the tree. This is what one determined person can do! Even after she descended and the tree was saved, anti-envionmental criminals attacked and damaged the tree, but it was repaired and survived.

Julia "Butterfly" Hill, born in 1973, is still an environmental activist and LUNA the Cedar tree still stands in a reserve of trees now set aside as a protected area.

Julia Hill said she didn't know how anyone could stand in the presence of such "ancient beings and not be affected."

Arbor Day is April 29 and I have been thinking a lot about trees lately, especially now that Spring has come back and my yard has awakened. I have a woodland yard - no Lawn. Living in my yard are more than 25 different kinds of trees from sweet gum to maple, and several evergreens, some of which were Christmas trees. I couldn't bear to know a tree had been killed for a decoration for a season for Christmas, so my daughter and I had 'root balled' trees for Christmas which we planted after the holiday as soon as the ground thawed. Also, there is a remarkable evergreen that my daughter brought home from Historic Williamsburg in a white paper cone style coffee cup. And there are the hollies - some that got here on their own and some I planted. The largest and oldest trees were here when I got here and were here when the house was built so they must be 50 to 75 years old, including an old oak in the center of the back yard.

Though I have never been a gardener, I have planted several kinds of plants in my yard. A Master Gardener who used to volunteer at the James and Ann Whitall House,at Red Bank Battlefield, Joyce Connelly, gave me a couple of pots of Lily of the Valley, which have flourished in my yard, along with a heliobore. Every Easter, I have planted tulips, daffodils and hyacinths after their blooms died out and they come back every Spring. In late summer when the Lily of the Valley bloom, their fragrance is intoxicating. Speaking of intoxicating fragrances, recently honeysuckle has invaded the front of my yard, but I can't bear to take it out and have decided to let it stay with us though I do fear it might invade the juniper next door and I think the forsythia beside it might be in danger. I have two or three forsythia, one is in bloom now. One was a gift. A friend of old days did yard work and was asked to dig out an old forsythia. He brought me the root ball with some brown sticks coming out of it and we planted it and it fourished as if to say Thank Yor for a second chance.

Lately I have thought of planting another tree in memory of a friend who died and his obituary asked that a tree be planted in his memory, Rob Sweetgall. He was a gentle soul, an ultra marathoner who preached walking fitness and lived the life. We were in love once, forty years ago. I would like to honor his memory. He was a gentle giant.

Well for the next couple of months, I think I will dedicate all my posts to trees and environmental issues. Just as a reminder, I believe I already did a write up on Saddler's Woods, but if you didn't see it, let me remind you that Saddler's Woods is a conservaation area of 24 acres of old growth forext in Haddon Township off of MacArthur Blvd, across from Newton Creek Park and behind the shopping centers. An escaped enslaved man, Joshua Saddler, found sanctuary with a Quaker farmer,named Evans, for whom he worked and from whom he bought the land where he established a small village for other freed people like himself called Saddlertown. In his will he stipulated that the woods should remain intact for perpetuity and so it has remained with the protection and stewardship of the Saddler's Woods Conservation Association. You should take a walk there on the nicely maintained and safe trail and enjoy the company of the trees.

By the way I have done two paintings this week of the Salem Oak (which fell after 660 years in 2019) - not sure yet what I am going to do with them, probaby give them to Salem Meeting and Woodbury Meeting maybe on Arbor Day!

Happy Trails and if it is through the trees, I know it will be happy! Jo Ann