Casey Trees

I began the search for my next chapter in my new mission shortly after I decided to volunteer at the CAFB. I ran across the assignment for Casey Trees and thought it sounded awesome. I am not really an "outdoors" kind of girl and I never planted a tree before, so I signed up and made my merry way to the city. The morning of April 30 rolled around and I actually contemplated not going. I was partially suffering from a of lingering bout with food poison from an particular franchise sub shop that shall remain nameless!  None the less, I arrived 40 minutes late to the site of the planting.  When I arrived everyone was already in action digging soil and planting trees.  I stopped by the registration table and spoke to a representative from the organization and apologized for being late. He was just happy that I showed up to help out at all. His thought was better late than never. There were other volunteers who showed up an hour later than I did which made me feel allot better, lol. The instructor gave me a short instructional information session about the tree planting process, the organization and it's impact on the DC metropolitan area.

Through my discussion with the Casey Tree's instructor, I found out that the organization is committed to restoring, enhancing and protecting the tree canopy of the nation's capital.  To fulfill it's mission, Casey Trees plants trees, engages thousands of volunteers of all ages in tree planting and care, provides year-round continuing education courses, monitors the city's tree canopy, develops interactive online tree tools and works with elected officials, developers and community groups to protect and care for existing trees and to encourage them to add new ones. As of late I have noticed the amount of trees that are cut down and replaced with mini-malls, office buildings, condos or houses across the DC Area.  It great to know that someone cares about replacing at least some of the trees that we loose in the process of all the urban sprawl.

While at Congress Heights Community Park, I learned about the safe keeping of various planting tools, trees the organization plants and how to plant a tree . We rolled out the tree we intended on planting and dug a whole 2-3 times the width, depth and height of the root bulb (i.e-the round sack of roots at the bottom of the tree).  We placed all the soil we dug up on a tarp and once the hole was complete we put the tree inside. I got to use this really awesome tool to cut the wires and burlap that surrounded  the root bulb but I was more excited about getting to use a pick-axe to break the ground for the next tree we were planting! After we placed the tree in the hole we covered it with the soil we originally dug up and tied each side for the tree together to make sure it remains stable. The process sounds quite simple but it can be labor intensive at least to me, lol...

I think I was most impressed with the fact that the organization returns to each of it's planting sites to maintain the trees that it has planted. During the summer they hire a bunch of college and high school students to assist with caring, maintaining, and watering each tree site.

*Check out the pictures of the tree planting below
Pictures of Congress Heights Tree Planting