Regina Calton Burchett – Drawings & Pastels

Wherever you live, you probably enjoy
the shade and scent and beauty of a tree.

When I leave home and drive in any direction, there are new neighborhoods emerging – in an incredibly short time span – from the freshly razed ground.  Mature trees are now heaped into scrap piles around the perimeter.

With the construction of most new homes, we seem to move further away from a life which integrates the home with the surrounding land and trees.  New subdivisions often appear to consist of a pasture planted with garages, each with an attached house and a token stick of a tree centered in the front square of grass. Along with new housing for our increasing population, we bring more cars and an increasing array of technology which creates emissions harmful to the environment.

One way we can counteract this is by planting a tree!

Even if you are lucky enough to live in an established neighborhood with mature trees, age and disease can damage or wipe out your trees – many trees were lost last year in our area to a combination of drought and oak wilt. So it is a good commitment to make to the value of our homes and to the health of our neighborhoods to plant a tree!

If you live in Texas, one very cool website created by Texas A&M is helpful on how to select, buy, plant and care for a new tree, based on your Texas county and the size of tree you want and where you are going to plant it – http://texastreeplanting.tamu.edu/

Plant a tree in memory of a friend or loved one who has passed or to celebrate a new child being born – one way to do this is via the National Arbor Day Foundation. Contact them: http://www.arborday.org/

Dell is partnering with the Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org with its “Plant a Tree for Me” Program which will offset the carbon dioxide produced through powering customers’ computer systems – http://www.conservationfund.org/node/326

Nature gives us balance in life in a variety of ways – physically and spiritually. Trees benefit us not only in their beauty but with their practical functions. Each positive step we take toward restoring the trees we have lost contributes to bringing Earth – and ourselves – back into balance.  (from previous blog of 8.2007)

And click here to view a great post today on “Making a Mark” blog on how to draw trees – it links to this Squidoo lens. Squidoo has some very helpful and detailed “how-to” draw, paint, etc. art pages.