Our Earth Day Pledge

As most of you know, hubby and I are totally into green energy! He’s definitely crunchy granola, while I’m more granola chic! Over the years, we have installed solar panels on our roof, put in a high efficiency boiler system to heat our hot water and our home, we have plans to put in a geo-thermal system in our front yard someday, and we have cloth diapered our babies. The only thing I’ve used my veto power for, was to stop hubby from putting a vertical axis wind turbine on our roof. After all, I’m not yet convinced it would be completely noise and vibration free.

Anyway, when Earth day was about to roll around this year, we debated what we wanted to do to celebrate. We knew we wanted to do something significant but a bit more personal, so this year we have pledged to plant a tree. This way, we can involve our kids and help them to learn a valuable lesson about being good stewards of their world. We want our kids to be aware of the concerns about the world’s resources but we also want to give them the knowledge that they have the power to do something about it. So what better way to do that than to get on our knees as a family, dig our hands in the dirt and plant a tree that will grow as our children grow.

As our kids get older, we are looking forward to treasured memories of them standing in its shade, exploring by its roots and possibly eating the fruit it yields. When my babies go off to university or tour the world by themselves, when they get their first apartment, when we walk them down the aisle to get married and when they start their own families. When all of these things have come to pass, we want to be able to look at that tree and remember all the laughs, smiles, silliness, growing pains and milestones that it’s seen. When our tree is old and we are old, we will sit and enjoy a lifetime of memories that we built after choosing to do one act of green.

If you would like to celebrate Earth Day by pledging to do something to make our world better place, then A Billion Acts of Green is the site for you! For our little act, my four tree choices are either: Magnolia tree, Japanese maple, Cherry tree, Crab Apple tree. Below are some photos of these trees.