Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World: Park Tree Planting

Today we were fortunate to participate in a community tree planting event in north Philly. A good friend of ours, Janet, organized the event. She is what the popular media would deem a 'community organizer.' In addition to her full-time job with the City of Phila, she is constantly planning events to improve and beautify the neighborhood. She was recently elected the President of the community center in her area and is shaking things up. She's had some great camps going for the youth this summer and is now working with the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society in beautifying the area. Janet's park was chosen for the kick-off of a citywide effort by two dozen Tree Tender groups to plant nearly 1,000 trees over two consecutive weekends. There was representative from the City Council (or maybe even the Councilman himself) and a newspaper reporter and photographer. It was pretty cool.

A few months back Janet approached me about helping her form a non-profit organization for all the work that she has been doing. The name of the company is Reyburn Park Neighbors. She's already raised about $25,000 but she needed formal paperwork done so that she could claim non-profit status for tax and fundraising purposes. I felt honored that she would ask me to help and also very happy to be able to use my education. Janet was able to get the Horticulture Society to donate the state and federal fees for the filings, altogether about $1000 and I started in on the paperwork. The state forms weren't too bad but the federal were about 15 pages. I also had to draft bylaws for the organization which wound up taking a lot of time, and I am actually in the process of reviewing them now just to make sure we have everything the fed needs so the application is not rejected.

Today's tree planting was at -- you guessed it -- Reyburn Park. We had a wonderful time and altogether planted 25 trees. Several members of the ward came out as well as those from the neighborhood. It rained the entire night before and as well as this morning and was projected to rain throughout the day. I confess that I was half tempted not to go but I knew a lot of people would bail and I couldn't let Janet down. Plus, I knew Charlton would love playing in the mud. About 10 minutes after we arrived, however, the skies started to clear and it warmed up into the 60s. We had so much fun with all our old and new friends.

This is Janet

Ward members Brother Call, Stephanie and Michael.

There was a short ceremony that lasted maybe 20 minutes. Charlton stood the entire time up front and middle and did not move. Every time there was applause, he would begin clapping madly and laughing. He loved it.