Saturday, October 09, 2010

Saturday scenes and scenery:
New tree grows in the Mission (we hope)

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Two weeks ago San Francisco Friends of the Urban Forest dropped off the trees in a neighborhood garage. Previously they had paid a contractor to cut out the concrete in the designated planting sites. Somebody got some stimulus money -- I hope.

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A slightly blurry group of volunteer tree planters checked out the terrific spread of donated breakfast goodies. We needed some sustenance before getting to work.

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There's an orderly system on FUF projects.

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Soon the sidewalk was a mess of labeled trees, support poles and milling workers. Some of us have been through this before. I mentioned to another volunteer that I'd been part of a tree planting down that block about 20 years ago. Not long after, the tree have been demolished by a drunk driver. He sighed, resigned. "Yet, sometimes people get buzzed ..."

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Labels to be stapled on the trees' support poles needed to be assembled. I don't imagine this helper could read them.

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Pretty soon, it was time to greet our own tree. We turned out to have pretty healthy and easily dug soil under the sidewalk -- who'd have expected that?

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Planters were instructed in how to free up any root-binding left over from the tree's incubation in a plastic pot.

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A neighbor drove in a corral of stakes to protect our new baby.

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She's an eriobatriya deflexa, a Bronze Loquat.

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Now it is up to us to water her and clean out her enclosure for two or three years. Let's hope she makes it; Mission streets can be tough.

1 comment:

Darlene said...

What a great idea. I wish we had more trees in Tucson, but the water situation is not conducive to planting many.