My partner and I are on the board of the Ozark Chinquapin Chestnut Foundation. These trees were one of the most important food sources for both animals and humans. A blight took them out in the 1950's. This organization is working hard to bring them back into our ecosystem.
We were just at the annual meeting and I was reminded that in the early 1900's almost ALL the trees in the Ozark Mountains were cut down for Railroad ties and such. In the Missouri Ozarks there is a small stand of Shortleaf Pines still surviving that massacre. We are going to visit them next week. Folks call them the WHISPERING PINES. I wonder what they are whispering? I bet they are saying, "Never let this happen again."
When I see pictures of the deforestation in the rainforests I just want to hang my head and cry, those trees are our LUNGS! We should not be clear cutting one of our most PRECIOUS resources...TREES! While creating this collage, I thought of the Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi. Here are some of the words to jog your memory, what an amazing song.
BIG YELLOW TAXI
Joni Mitchell
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot SPOT
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
Then they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
Hey farmer, farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But LEAVE me the birds and the bees
Please!
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
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