For many years, Amma has been encouraging us to plant trees as a way of healing the Earth. This year, devotees in the Pacific Northwest decided to honor Amma’s 64th birthday by planting trees. We asked everyone to let us know how many trees they would plant and to complete the planting by November 5th. We were hoping at least 64 trees would be pledged. At the time I am writing this post, the pledge count is up to 211!
Seattle Parks Department gave us 37 trees to plant in our Greenbelt site. That work party was held last Sunday, October 22nd. Thirty-two GreenFriends members participated. Many of them had never seen the site before and others hadn’t been there for a long time. I enjoyed seeing and hearing their reactions to the work we’ve done over the last year.
The work party began with an orientation to the site…
and then Pujarini Meera conducted a series of rituals asking Mother Earth for permission to plant the trees and to nurture and protect them after they are planted. I thought it was a beautiful ceremony. (Click on any of the galleries to enlarge the photos.)
After the rituals were over, Ananya and I gave planting instructions…
and then came the fun of planting the trees.
Amma’s birthday project will be over on November 5, but our work in the restoring this Greenbelt site will, of course, continue. We will finish preparing nine planting areas at a work party on November 11 and then will plant 360 shrubs in those areas on November 15!
Living, Learning and Letting Go 
Awesome!
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Wonderful! Even though Atlanta calls itself the “city in a forest” it seems we lose a lot of the existing trees. We need people with your dedication here!
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I didn’t know that Atlanta calls itself that. It is definitely a beautiful city although when I was there recently I only saw the city part!
Seattle has a great system. Green Seattle Partnership is an organization that is an intermediary between all of the volunteer groups and the Seattle Parks Department. I understand that mouths drop open when they go to meetings in other parts of the country and report how many volunteer hours we have in a year. November 4 is Green Seattle Day. There will be hundreds of volunteers planting thousands of trees tomorrow.
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