Tree Tags

It’s hard to grow plants here in Texas. That’s why Texans love their wildflowers (don’t call them weeds) and their trees (even the freaking Mountain Cedar whose pollen plagues me all winter long). If a tree is 8 inches in diameter, measuring from the base to 4 1/2 feet above ground, then it is a protected tree. To remove it, even if it’s on your property is against the law though there are things you can do such as plant a replacement tree that has been approved by the city. Each tree is referenced on a site plan so they can keep track of them.

Sean loves numbers so when we take walks with him, he wants to look at all the trees with tags and read each number outloud. There are a bunch of these trees and some of them are tucked in away from the trail so we have to fight through tall grass risking snake bites and Lyme disease just so he can satisfy this compulsion. We live just two blocks from the subdivision’s pool yet it takes us like half an hour to get there because we MUST read all the numbers.

An interesting find is that halfway between the start of the trail and the pool are the trees with the numbers 2008 and 2009, the years that Sean and Zack were born. We’ve talked about somehow scraping the numbers off the trees and putting them in their scrapbooks (the ones I have started but not touched for months or in Sean’s case, over a year) but that would probably be against the law or something so instead, I took pictures of the two tags. I know, how law abiding of me.