We had looked at lots of ways of trying to keep holidays as eco friendly as possible. It is never easy with kids and the pressures of keeping up with the Jones’. Last year we ordered a live tree, in which to big burly people came by, dropped off a tree and picked it up 14 days later and planted it. We looked at doing that again this year, but the companies website said they were not going to be in operation in 2011, but to check back in 2012.

So this year, we decided to buy a potted tree and plant it ourselves at the end of the street near the Ravenswood Rail line. We thought it would do a few things, like keep more trees out of the landfill, add more trees (carbon sink and helps keep it cooler in the summer) to Chicago, help reduce rail noise and help make the area more attractive to look at. We don’t know if it will work, but time will tell! I planted it about Dec 30th, so it had been in the house about 3 weeks, which might be too long for trees, but it has been a mild winter.

I will keep watching it to see if it makes it. If it does, next year we thought it might be fun to try to organize others on our block to do the same and we can plant 5 or 10 trees in the same area next year. We think it may be a great community building event and beautification project for that part of our neighborhood. Maybe through time we can find more and more ways to plant them in the neighborhood. We will see where it takes us.