On Trees and the Future

Yesterday was the big day! Eleven trees in all planted along Rose Creek. It’s amazing how much bureaucracy goes into planting eleven trees.

First, there’s the permit. Luckily, that one was easy as the City of San Diego’s Environmental Services Department had a permit and approval from the California Coastal Commission to remove invasive plants and replace them with natives.

Then there’s the matter of the trees. So this grass roots group I’m involved with, the Friends of Rose Creek, decided we would raise two thousand dollars to purchase ten 24” box trees – trees about eight feet tall. Given that we were planting Coast Live Oak and Torrey Pine and they take forever to get big enough to throw a shadow, we wanted to start as large as we could afford. After all, if I die of old age, I only have another thirty years left; I yearned to see the oaks looking regal and majestic before someone tosses me off a boat into the sea or composts me in the backcountry.

Unfortunately, our dreams were a lot stronger than our fund raising skills and our funds amounted to ten percent of our target. So then what?

Environmental Services hooked us up! With trees and labor to plant the trees. The local utility company, Sempra, paid for seven trees. The youthful crew of the San Diego Urban Corps dug holes, planted trees and picked up trash – they even yanked a very dead duck out of the weeds. San Diego Earthworks and the Friends of Rose Creek united to purchase the two 24” box Torrey Pines that were not donated. Two small Mexican Elderberry trees were donated by me.

The tree dedication ceremony was a success with local business owners promising to donate trees in the future, local residents volunteering to help water the trees, and the local paper sending out a photographer to capture the event on film. I even discovered that one of my neighbors is also an aspiring novelist.

Yesterday was the culmination of endless meetings that seemed pointless at the time. Efforts to outreach to the community had failed to inspire people. Quarters thrown into a glass bowls at public events amounted to purchase of branches not trees. And all along, I tried to remind myself that process creates progress. One foot in front of the other with a goal in sight creates the momentum needed to move if not exactly mountains, then at least eleven trees from a nursery to Pacific Beach and eventually into the ground between Bayview Terrace Elementary and Rose Creek.

The oaks won’t mature for another twenty five years – a very long time in our instant gratification culture. While some might consider me sentimental, knowing that the children of today will explore Rose Cree and climb trees with their children in the year 2033 is one small step in my feeble attempts at creating a positive future for the seventh generation.

I know that Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai changed the course of history by motivating thousands to plant trees in Kenya and across the African continent. Well as I learned yesterday, even the planting of eleven trees has a galvanizing effect on the community.