Just for Fun - Green Magic

I received an email from Mike Traster who lives in Washington State. Because I liked what I read and Just for fun, check out

Green Magic

"For the last 6 or 7 years I've been engaged in a "radical" activity.

It might cost me 3 bucks a year in gas, and a couple of hours of my
time...

Up here in Columbia county, there are lots of Alder trees... They are fast growing robust trees. They like to grow in the gulleys... where water collects. They fix nitrogen to the soil.

I collect the seeds when they mature. Alder seeds look like 3/4 inch long pine cones...and each one has 20 or 30....+++ little seeds in it...

I figure in an bad year I collect perhaps two thousand seed cones. In a good year, probably 20,000 of em. Once or twice we've filled up a big plastic shopping bag... with them.

While driving along, I slow or stop at the side of the road and cast out ten or twenty at a time...into the gulleys in the spots where there are no overhead wires...

This is not on private property....
Often I just have the passenger window open and flip them out ...over the rail....you get good at it after a while..

I figure it like this... They will never mow those steep hills or develop that land.. If only one in 500 seed cones makes a tree, I've planted 4 to 40 trees a year... In time, they make "copies" of themselves... usually by around year 4.

So by now, I imagine conservatively 50 to 150 trees have grown, and some are already making more trees.

It is a perfect "radical" activity

No one approves or disapproves of it

no one gets hurt

no one is wrong or right

I don't get air time on tv for doing it...

The trees are good for us all you , me, critters, the air...etc etc..

It takes no law to do it

The city council didn't vote on it..

It's not part of the tax base..

you don't get taxed for doing it

Since we live in widely varying climates, you might want to plant/throw different types of seeds where you live... oak, maple, alder, horse chestnut... chestnut, the list goes on and on....maybe even seeds from fruit trees.... apple, pear, peach, plum

any body else done this? It's so simple...imagine a couple of effortless hours in a year... and these results....

I have to give credit to another person for this idea... a Frenchman Named Eleazar Bouffier...If I remember correctly... Over 40 years of tending a flock of sheep up in the high plains he planted dozens of various tree seeds daily... when he had finished he'd planted a forest... 20 by 20 miles.... yep 400 square mile forest created by one man ....while he was doing his regular work!!

If you look up "the man who planted trees", there's a story or two out there about what he did..."

A good case for doing little things to make a big difference...

Thanks Mike!