Trees of Love

The month of February always gets us in the mood for love. WhenValentine’s became a fad, sending of roses and chocolates also became part of it. A new way of expressing this feeling has come in a more sustainable way in Talisay City.

Headed by their mayor, Mayor Soc Fernandez, their Vice Mayor Allan Bucao and Environment Councilor Bernard Odilao the city kicked-off their Valentine celebration with a more sustainable expression of love, the giving of tree seedlings.

According to Vice Mayor Bucao, “If you buy roses, after a while the flowers wilt and the only remnants of your gift are thorns. If you give chocolates, you may be adding up to the cholesterol count or blood sugar of your beloved. So it is best to give tree seedlings instead.”

There is wisdom in this simple act. After a while, this “gift of love’ may flower and bear fruit or simply canopy the roadways and fields to give people shade. Trees are also the best soldiers that erect a barrier to erosion and they are the best treasurers of our major resource, water. Trees help engineer aquifers and provide the best underwater dams. They also are the soothing doctors to our weary souls that need replenishment of good air. Oxygen from foliage provides the best shield to the gaping ozone layer that threaten the very breath we take.

During the ceremonial tree planting held last February 12 at the Talisay City Hall grounds, members of the Talisay City College, and Sister Julia Yap who also represented the Academe, the business sector as represented by San Miguel Brewery Inc. and Gaisano Tabunok, the water utility, Metro Cebu Water District, along with the members of the organization, Tubag Batan-on Alang sa Kalikupan joined to show their expression of love for mother nature and the future generation.

The local government committed to greening the city and to allocating some of their countryside lands for nature parks. The Tubag Batan-on Alang sa Kalikupan members which has a list of 400 individuals in its roster also committed to planting more trees in their respective barangays. The other members of the academe likewise demonstrated their support to the project by initiating their own tree planting activities in their respective institutions. For the business sector, the commitment was to continue supporting this initiative through participation in the local initiatives to plant trees and grow more environment-friendly practices at the workplace.

The hope of this endeavor is to contaminate the rest of the Cebuano population with this move to green empty spaces in their respective barangays and to make idle lands a tree residence so that no space will be left empty and no soil deemed barren with lack of cultivation.