Feel like branching out?

by Diana Nelson Jones/Feb 2

Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest will hold another round of Tree Tender training starting Feb. 17 in the Strip. FPUF will hold four three-day courses and two one-day courses through July.

Registration is open now. Go to http://www.pittsburghforest.org/treetendercourse. The cost is $40 for three sessions, with meals included and a "Tree Tender" T-shirt when you finish.

Trees are your best antiques.  ~Alexander Smith

Here's the schedule:

* February 17, 24 and March 3 at the Rothschild-Doyno Collaborative (an architectural studio), 2847 Penn Ave., Strip District;
* March 24, 31 and April 7 at the Kingsley Association, 6435 Frankstown Road, Larimer;
*May 11, 18 and 25 at the Citiparks Magee Senior Center, 745 Greenfield Ave., Greenfield;
*September 16, 23 and 30 at the Riverview Park Activities Building, Riverview Drive, Perry North;
*Saturday, June 19, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Rothschild-Doyno Collaborative;
*Saturday July 17, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at St. Mary on the Mount Church, 403 Grandview Ave., Mount Washington.

 

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods.  But he cannot save them from fools."  ~John Muir

 

Tree Tenders are the city's volunteer arborist wannabes. We serve as helpers in FPUF- and city-directed tree projects in neighborhoods and as guides (read: nags) to our neighbors about not hanging backpacks on branches or tying bikes to trees or planting flowers in the little spaces the trees need all to themselves.

You, too can be a nag and, better yet, learn how a tree should be pruned and why, and the reasons behind the do's and don't's and the reasons why the city needs all the tree advocates it can get. Although we are a heavily forested city, much of our hillside tree collections are invasive species, and of our 30,000 street trees, 10 percent have been removed since 2005 because they were diseased or dying.

"Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats."  ~Woody Allen