New Orleans used to be a city that conjured up images of good times, good music and good food. Since August 2005, those images have been replaced with the pictures of desperation and desolation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Now New Orleans and her people are on a long, long road to recovery.
I’m in the city to attend the turfgrass meetings of the Crop Science Society of America in my role as science editor of GCM. I come to these meetings every year, but going to a meeting in a city that has still not recovered from the most expensive natural disaster in the country’s history leaves one with a sense of obligation to do something to help. The organizers of the meeting arranged for members to participate in an activity to benefit New Orleans, but it conflicted with the turf tour. Fortunately, Wendy Gelernter of Pace Consulting in San Diego found an agronomically sound alternative, tree planting, and made arrangements for Turfgrass Division (aka C-5) members of the Crop Science Society to participate.
So, Saturday morning, Wendy, her husband and business partner Larry Stowell, and I grab a cab and head for Café Touché in the Lakeview area of New Orleans near Lake Pontchartrain. Our job is to help plant trees in the neighborhood, which was heavily damaged when the 17th Street levee failed.
New Orleans lost about 50,000 trees to wind and water damage, and one woman decided to do what she could to replace some of them. Monique Pilié-- whose family has lived in the city since the 1700s -- had always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail, so she raised money by asking for pledges for every mile she hiked on the trail. She paid all the expenses associated with the hike from her own pocket, and all the donations she received went into a fund toward planting 2,175 trees, one for each mile of her hike.
Monique quit her job, sold her house, and left New Orleans on April 2006. She completed her hike Oct. 18, 2006. Since returning to New Orleans, she has planted almost 1,100 trees, including 99 15-gallon trees donated as part of the gift baskets received by this year’s Academy Award winners. Monique continues to raise money to pay for tree planting (her hike didn’t raise enough to cover all 2,175 trees), and on weekends in spring and fall, the best times for planting trees in the city, she works with volunteers to plant trees in parks, front yards and “nature strips” (the area between the sidewalk and the street).
Homeowners can request trees from Monique, who works with local volunteer groups and the city to place trees where they are needed. Her Web site (www.HikeforKatreena.com) explains how to request or donate a tree and how to adopt a tree. Besides planting the trees, Monique is also committed to caring for trees during their first year to make sure they survive.
Now back to Saturday. It turns out that Monique is a little powerhouse of a woman who has enough energy for 10 people. As she says, she is currently working part time for FedEx and full time on the tree-planting project. She arrives at our meeting place in a little red pickup that sports a “Hike for Katreena” logo. She needs the truck to transport trees, shovels, pick axes and the occasional volunteer. Within a short period of time she has greeted all of us, explained the basics of tree planting and divided us up into groups that will go to different locations. We have 42 trees to plant -- some houses get three or four trees -- and she wants us to be finished by noon. But she has to teach us how to plant a tree first.
We all go to a nearby house to watch her plant the first tree. The homeowner isn’t there, but his neighbor tells us where the tree should be planted, and Monique leaves a pamphlet (as she does at every house) that explains how to care for the tree.
Larry volunteers to help dig the hole for the tree, and within what seems like five minutes, the hole is dug, the root ball has been loosened, the tree is positioned in the hole (straight -- always make sure it’s straight), and the soil has been carefully pushed in around the root ball and the soil on the top has been shaped into a little levee around the tree. She’s done here now and begins driving from block to block, dropping off trees for the volunteers to plant.
In short order, we have planted all 42 trees. Despite heavy clay soil, tenacious bermudagrass, buried bottle caps and odd pieces of wood, the 20 or so volunteers are finished by about 11 o’clock and reassemble at Touché Café for a hearty (and free) lunch and lively discussions about New Orleans accents and novel forms of punishment in Catholic school in Louisiana.
We don’t intend to stay for lunch, but everyone is so nice and their stories about living in New Orleans before and after Katrina are so riveting, we decide we really should. And then, just when we’re ready to leave, two of the volunteers ask if we want a ride to the trolley stop. Once we’re in the car, the driver tells us that, if we don’t mind, she’d really like to show us something. Before we know it, we’re off to see where the 17th Street levee failed and water from Lake Pontchartrain flooded the Lakeview area, and we’re getting a full-blown tour of damage in the Lakeview area. We also learn that our driver is a pediatrician and she worked in the Touro Infirmary, the only functional hospital in the city, for eight days after the storm.
All of these people are so amazing. They have suffered and survived, and they are working to make their city a good place to live again. Planting a few trees is the least we could do.
Here are a few photos from El Rio Country Club, located about 30 minutes outside Guadalajara, Mexico.
