Today we planted 25 trees! They are all quite small saplings, but they look healthy.We planted ten white spruce, ten Manitoba maple, and five aspen poplar. We have a lot of aspen poplar on our acreage already but some of them were taken out when this house was built, leaving a fairly large gap in the treeline. So these five new trees will help to fill that.
We also wanted some more evergreens, so that we'd have some color to look at in the Winter, when all the deciduous trees are bare and gray.
And the maples, well, I'm not sure why we ordered ten of them, because they get quite big. But they are gorgeous in the Fall, and maybe one day we will make some maple syrup from them - you never know!
According to this carbon footprint calculator, in planting this many trees we may have come close to offsetting the amount of carbon emissions I put into the atmosphere with my car for one year. The the website cautions that there are a lot of variables to consider, however, including that they calculate the carbon absorption as though the tree were growing in a tropical area, which these trees definitely are not!
Tomorrow both Gord and I are off to the CSA farm this time. It will be neat to see how the onions I helped plant last time are doing, and just how many more things are growing!
Update: Ack! The deer (I think) have eaten the tops of the maples and pulled two of them right out! I'm going to try putting some tomato cages around them (the trees, not the deer).
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2 comments:
Good for you, Theresa! That's amazing that 25 trees will offset all of your CO2 from driving. I had no idea that planting so few trees could make such a big difference. I wish we had a bigger yard for more trees and garden space -- these kind of trees don't count for offsetting, do they.
Ha! Nope, I don't think the bonsais will do much offsetting. I think my 25 trees will offset as much CO2 in their entire lifespan as in my one year of driving though, so I will have to plant 25 trees every year! I'd like to reduce my driving though, but so far that has required more change in my life than I'm willing to make right now. Gord has reduced his driving down to only two days a week though, a lot of weeks.
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