April showers bring May flowers, eh?
Somebody alert the providers of floral items. They’re either going to be left twiddling their thumbs because the general public is inundated by blooms of exotic sizes and descriptions springing up along every highway and by-way or their own backyards…or…there will be wholesalers of flowers lurking around corners trying to off-load cheap orchid and baby’s breath that they just happen to have a truckload of in a back alley somewhere. “Hey, little girl, want some real cool Dianthus barbatus? Try it, you’ll like it. Give it to your friends. I’ll come back tomorrow. Bring your lunch money.”
So this week you could celebrate the one hundred forty-second anniversary of the first Arbor Day, begun in Nebraska—where they really needed trees—in 1872(If you don’t count Villanueva de la Sierra in Spain in 1805). J. Sterling Morton was the organizer of that first event and over one million trees were planted in Nebraska. Later, Major Israel McCreight of DuBois, PA, after listening to Theodore Roosevelt’s speaking of his interest in conservation and a national park system, declared that the speeches shouldn’t be directed only at businessmen, but at schoolchildren. Gifford Pinchot, head of the United States Forest Service, picked up that ball and ran with it. On April 15, 1907, Roosevelt issued the Arbor Day Proclamation to the School Children of the United States about the importance of trees.
You might want to try planting a bald cypress. They like moist soil. We’ve got that.
Anyway, check with your local county Soil and Water Conservation District(Every county’s got one, I think.);they’ve got evergreens, deciduous trees, shrubs, flowering & fruiting trees( lots of native plants) at good prices. Some get sold out early, some get left over and can be picked up for a song. Last year I got American Chestnut whips and a subscription to the Ohio Nut Growers Association magazine, “In A Nutshell”. No smart remarks, please. Just reading about the plants and their characteristics is really interesting.
You can get fish too. Might need them for the back forty.
