Apr 2, 2012 3 min read

Planting trees.

At the desk, 7:12 a.m.

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon planting fruit trees in our back yard.

In order, these are: a plum, peach, and pear bare trees.

This plum, peach, and pear tree join the apple, plum, and espaliered apricot and nectarine. When these three root in, we will espalier them as well. The other plum and apple are free trees.

You're probably asking yourself, why plant trees?

Here's three fast reasons to plant trees:

1. They are easy to take care of, need very little water, and are beautiful. Because the America's were once covered trees, trees root in fast and grow well.

The green man watches over our apricot tree bloom earilier this spring.

2. These trees are bare root fruit trees. In a year, they will produce yummy fruit like we get from our 2-year old plum, apple, nectarine, and apricot.

3. A single mature tree "can absorb roughly 48 pounds of CO2 a year. The tree in turn releases enough oxygen to sustain two human beings." (Trees and your environment) Second only to stop eating beef, planting a tree is the best thing you can do for the environment and the world.

We don't have a huge yard. We buy these trees at Costco and they cost around $10 as bare root. We believe in planting trees. These trees are muti-variate, which means that a variety of types of fruit are grafted onto one tree stalk. One tree is like it's own orchard. Last year, each branch of our plum tree created a different type of fruit. We had so many plums we gave them away to friends. (We planted another plum because the other plum did so well in our yard.)

These trees are planted against the north fence to encourage them to bloom a little later in the season. Our apricot, for example, already has fruit on and it's supposed to snow tomorrow. (I'll cover it.)

I guess we plant trees because we believe in planting today for fruit tomorrow. We put the tree in the ground as a 2 or 3 year old bare root. We water and trim the tree. A few of them we espalier. We encourage the tree to grow and in a few years, it bears fruit to care for us.

This magnolia was a tiny, tiny tree we planted in our front yard. It's received much abuse - trampled on by kids and drunken people getting in and out of their cards, but this spring, it produced these gorgeous flowers. Wow.

We grow books in the same way. We plant a book, nurture it, get reviews, encourage people to talk about it, and over time, it grows in popularity. To me, this just makes sense.

That's also why we're investing our time and resources into the Living Water for Girls campaign. We believe that a little seed money, if nurtured with love and care, will result in a gorgeous blossom. Maybe I'll never see the 'fruit' of our labor on the fundraising campaign, but what I'll know is that I invested my time, energy, and resources into encouraging something beautiful to grow. If you have a chance, check out our campaign. Even one dollar can make a HUGE difference in encouraging these girls to hope.

And plant a tree. The world will thank you.

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