Daily Note
Every day, a photograph, a poem. The block west of us once had 34 90-year old maple trees growing along the sidewalk. But the city C H O P P E D them down, one by one, to redo the sidewalks. Sad. So Sad. So today as I walked by the neighbor’s garden, I noticed that I can now see the batholith of granite in the huge rock face at the edge of town, the beginning of the semi-arid shrub-steppe ecosystem in which we live– dry, hot and drier and hotter now because of global warming.
But in town, the early city planners planted gardens and shrubs and trees to bring the woodlands and the cool breeze and shade that foliage adds, a gift of nature’s gifts to the community.
Those 34 trees shaded not just the street on which they were planted, but our house and the houses across our street too. Now they all get beaten by summer’s blazing sun rays. What a shame. I’d rather have the trees than a sidewalk. I’ve written about this before [Earth Gives] and provided these links to the benefits of planting trees and such as cool green barriers in our warming world:
- Urban Forestry Grants
- Tree City / Arbor Day / Urban Forests [I guess we’ll never be on this list]
- Tree Equity– Improving Neighborhood Tree Canopies
- Urban and Community Forestry
- Biden-Harris Tree and Green Spaces
The loss of those trees is so sad to me, that I’ve not even stepped onto that street to see the damage. I avoid it; I once walked it daily. It was my favorite street, so cool and shady in the summer heat. It’s a terrible loss.
And so a poem. Not a good poem, but a poem that needs to be said.
Poetry
So…
Around the town
the grasses grow
on rocks and soil,
very hot and dry, so…In the town
the foliage grows,
bushes, flowers,
trees are sown, so…For the town
the shadows cool
the paths and homes
of global warming’s heat, so!
Sheri Edwards
08.26.23 238.365.23
Poetry/Photography [See-Frame-Focus]
#clmooc #smallpoems #poetry23 #climatechange #globalwarming #urbanforests
I wonder, if I draw a line... 