Weekday crew leaders make up for lost time

Chris Canida, Cody Erhart and Jim O'Neil formed a weekday superstar crew this week to make up for Saturday's canceled planting. (FOT file)

By Andy Meeks

Last Saturday, for the first time in over three years, Friends of Trees postponed a planting.

While the dangerous road conditions never fully materialized, all the purchased trees designated for holes in Portland, Beaverton and Tigard were never planted.

Almost immediately, the work began at the Friends of Trees office to get things back on track. The Beaverton planting was rescheduled for this Saturday (11920 SW Clifford Street, Beaverton – 9:00am) and the Durham City Park planting was rescheduled for January 23rd.

However, the Brentwood-Darlington, Mt. Scott Arleta and Woodstock planting consisted of almost 200 street and yard trees that were already pulled from the very frozen soil in the nurseries and assembled on the Friends of Trees lot covered in insulating layers of hay. These trees couldn’t wait long before needing a new dirt home.

And this is where our superstar volunteer crew leaders and drivers enter the story. On short notice and in less-than-ideal conditions, seven crews planted over 70 trees on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and another four crews will head out tomorrow morning to help (almost) finish the work that would have otherwise been done in four hours last weekend.

We wanted to publicly thank all of the brave, hearty, and big-hearted volunteers who gave their time and energy this week to help get the Neighborhood Trees planting schedule back on track. Thank you all so very much!

[Drum roll, please…]