Yup, that's me, hard at it getting that Arbutus 'Marina', a.k.a. Strawberry tree, planted in front of our house. This past weekend Ute and I helped put in a bunch of new trees in our neighborhood with Friends of the Urban Forest. We'd been wanting a tree for some time and FUF gives great deals to residents in our neighborhood. They are a really wonderful organization and so incredibly organized. Along with fellow neighbors, we planted a total of 92 trees in the area, many of them going to Monroe Elementary School where Ute is a 1st grader. They had the whole operation running like a well oiled machine. Our little group of volunteers was the slowest by far, but we still finished somewhere around 1pm. What the above picture doesn't show is that right after it was snapped, I pulled that post pounder up too high, raising it up above the post, lost my balance (and if you've ever picked up a post pounder you know why), came careening off the ladder, hitting the noggin of that older gentleman in the train hat who was standing underneath me, all after our planting leader gave us a dismissive lecture about how tree planting is not a really dangerous activity, but if accidents were to occur, it would be when using the post pounder. I love being the example of why safety precautions are in place. I felt just like a toddler after being given that ubiquitous parental lecture "That's why I told you not to jump on the couch!"
Here's a pic of my big girl doing a much better, and safer, job than I.
Here I am, the joyful owner of a new tree.
If you have a program like this in your city, I highly recommend participating.
In other news, the tomatoes are ripening a plenty. In fact, I was able to make some delicious homemade tomato sauce to freeze with all the excess. The recipe came from Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (a really wonderful read btw). It called for quite a bit of basil, which I will probably moderate on my next attempt of this concoction. But all in all, the sauce tastes great.
Hooray for Trees. You can keep the tomatoes. :-)
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