This year I am renting a house in Georgetown. It is the first time that I’ve lived in this kind of housing situation and while there are many things I love about it, I can’t help but be salty about how my yard is completely bereft of trees. My car sits parked in front of my lovely home and has absolutely no shade to keep it from heating up like a large, black, car shaped oven. So when I heard from one of my editors that Georgetown Parks and Recreation was going to be giving away free trees, I jumped at the opportunity and filled out the interest forms right there at the meeting. This was my first mistake. 

Maybe I should have talked to my roommates before signing up to get a free tree. Maybe I should have considered what I would do with it since, as I said, I’m renting the house. I wouldn’t have consulted with my parents about getting a tree, because honestly, I didn’t want their opinion either way. When I told my friends, the reactions were not surprising, “Oh that’s kinda weird, but cool I guess,” and “Sure, go crazy, get a free tree!” were the responses of choice. I mean, who wouldn’t want a free pecan tree for their shadeless yard? Do you know how expensive pecans are at H.E.B?

It didn’t take long for me to start having doubts. I mean, really, what did I think I was going to do with a tree, especially knowing I might move to an apartment somewhere cool, like Austin, next year. A tree is a pretty long-term commitment. Okay, so the tree was probably going to be just a sapling, right? And I can keep it in increasingly large (but not too large) pots until I have somewhere semi-permanent to plant it. Surely I’ll have a few years before it gets unmanageably huge. Wrong.

This year will be Georgetown’s 3rd annual tree giveaway for Arbor Day and I couldn’t be more supportive. Tree giveaways and planting events have become quite popular over the years. Organizations like the National Wildlife Federation encourages people to host events like these because trees are such a vital part of our ecosystem. Arbor Day was created to help raise awareness about the importance of trees and the day is typically celebrated by planting a tree. While Arbor Day was founded on April 10, 1872, Texas chooses to celebrate the day on the first Friday of November.

I received my confirmation email today. The Georgetown Parks and Recreation congratulated me on qualifying for a free tree and also gave me the information about how and where I need to go to take advantage of this incredible opportunity. 400 trees were made available for this event and they have all been reserved. I can pick up my pecan tree at 8:30 A.M. on November 2nd. I should bring a large car or pickup truck to transport my 5 foot tall tree. 5 feet tall. That tree is almost as tall as I am. I don’t know where I’m going to keep a person sized tree. At least my car will have some shade this fall. If you feel so compelled to follow in my footsteps next year or have other nefarious plans involving free trees, check out Georgetown’s parks and recreation website next September. There’s no confirmation yet that they will be hosting the event again, but I hope you’ll agree it’s worth checking back in just in case.