April - time to pay my Carbon fixation taxes

The wood chips I used to place around the base of each newly set seedling, is carbon or trimmed & chipped wood from the Austrian Pines we planted years ago.

I love planting trees almost as much as I love building stone walls. Both of these activites do no harm to the environment, ...although they are not high priority economic stimulus items for the current economy.

For the last 20+years in the class room, I have had student planting trees on school grounds every April and this year I continue the April tradition of planting trees here at home, despite having moved out of the field of secondary education. [I hope some my former students remember the "tree planting" lesson.]

Yesterday I finished placing blue, transluscent shields around 50 red oak trees planted last week. They were interspersed among our Austrian Pines, now 20 years old and under attack from the diplodia tip blight fungus. Removal of dead under branches improves air circulation among the pines, but as a precaution we have been transplanting in Norway Spruce, White Spruce, Sugar Maples, American Beech, and this year Red Oak seedlings among the Austrian Pines.

The goal is to insure that this 2.5 acres evolves into a climax forest and over the years continues to "lock up or fixate" atmospheric Carbon into wood.

Recall the formula for photosynthesis:

6CO2+12H2O -light energy & green chlorophyll-> 6O2+6H2O+C6H12O6 .

The C6H12O6 or sugar, you will recall from basic biology, is the raw material from which these plants will produce organic leaves, seeds, branches, trunks ... in short wood. With each tree that grows over the decades, I am removing some of the carbon I put into the atmosphere by my daily activities, thus "paying my Carbon tax".

Have your paid your Carbon taxes yet?

It is not too late.

Chendrashaker