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This Year’s Arbor Day Had a Personal Meaning

My family has had a rule for some time that if we lose a tree (or have to cut one down for some reason) that we need to figure out how to plant two to replace it. It’s a rule that’s hard to follow sometimes, especially when a storm comes through and takes out two of the tallest trees on our heavily-forested cliffside property here in Georgia.

But luckily Arbory Digital is willing to pitch in and help on Arbor Day, so I had company backing in the enterprise of planting some new trees to try to pay our “arbor debt.”

A thing I should mention is that, as a parent of 3, my wife and I have tried to engender in our kids a really personal relationship with the woods. Responsibility depends in a great degree on personal contact and understanding, and we have zero hope for the future of our environment if we don’t raise kids who love trees.

So, the kids came with us and picked out a pair of trees which we then planted on the edges of our forest.

We planted a gorgeous flowering apple tree at the front of our house, and a pink flowering dogwood at the back near the mountain bike trails that my son has made.

It’s family tradition that we name all of the trees that we plant. As we recently lost our family dog of 13 years, a positively lovely American Foxhound named Lady, the kids immediately and unanimously decided to name the tree “Lady Dogwood”

It may seem small an insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It’s seemingly insignificant even in the scope of an already sizable forest.

Mr. Julius Sterling Morton - the man who is largely responsible for the Arbor Day movement in the United States - once said:

The cultivation of trees is the cultivation of the good, the beautiful and the ennobling in man.

It’s that spirit that we’re not just carrying on ourselves, but hoping to imbue into our children as well - and that’s most certainly not insignificant.

We’re happy to carry on that tradition, and hopefully can convince a few more people to do the same.

About the Author

Tad Reeves
Principal Architect at Arbory Digital

AEM Architect & DevOps guy with 14 years experience on AEM/CQ and 25+ years in systems infrastructure. He’s been mountain biking longer than he’s been doing system administration, and though originally from Maine, makes his home in the mountains of Northwest Georgia.

Contact Tad on Linkedin

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