GREEN WINDOWS IN EVERY WALL TO BREATH EASY

Green windows, or greenery out every window, means one thing:

You’re in Oregon.

Maybe you’ve heard of Oregon from someone who visited the state in the summer and raved about how green it was.

Or you live here and understand what all the green is about.

What’s it about? Since trees leak oxygen, it’s about fresh air.

From the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

 A tree has the ability to provide an essential of life for all living things on our planet – oxygen, and the power to remove harmful gases like carbon dioxide making the air we breathe healthier.

So living in an area surrounded by trees is like living in an oxygen tent? Compared to the cement jungle of urban living, it is.

The problem with trees isn’t too much oxygen, it’s the work needed for them to do their job. If you want green windows, it’s work.

2

For the non-forestry people, like yours truly, the Ag Dept. breaks it down:

To keep it simple a tree is comprised of its leaves, stems, trunk and its roots.  When you look at a tree, note that about five percent of the tree is comprised of its leaves, 15 percent its stems, 60 percent goes into its trunk and 20 percent is devoted to its roots.

When I look at trees they all look 100% leaves, and that’s the problem. I’ve got big trees and used to have more. Two huge maples took a dive a few years back. I breathed easier with them creating a wall of oxygen.

To their credit, I breathed easier when they didn’t fall on the roof. But that’s beside the point.

Everyone loves breathing that tree oxygen, but ask neighbors for help when the leaves drop?

That’s a breath taking ask when leaves from one property somehow blow right into another yard or driveway.

Like I’m the boss of leaves and wind?

Big Cities Know The Benefits Of Green Windows

From nature.org:

Trees are a valuable tool for improving public health in America’s cities. They reduce harmful pollutants and mitigate summer air temperatures. And when residents are in close proximity to parks, it has been shown to have both physical and mental health benefits. Yet as the scientific case for the benefits of urban trees has grown stronger in recent decades, public investment in them has decreased.

But, if public investment decreases, do both physical and mental health aspects of living among trees also decrease?

I remember driving through the Bonx on the way to the Bronx Zoo in the 70’s. The neighborhood looked like it had been bombed, set on fire, and abandoned. Blocks of bare cement and broken window building, big buildings.

Big cities like Tigard get it.

One thing science shows is fewer trees means less oxygen, less shade, and no bearing witness to the magnificence of these huge plants.

With so many people claiming to be personal experts in science they have no idea about, their scientific opinions rarely change. They see the work part of trees, the clean up, but remain baffled over tree benefits.

Drive down any SE Portland tree-lined residential street in the fall and you’ll see the work part. From leaf piles, to leaf bins, to leaf day disposal sites, the work is on-going. Luckily the residents have an ample supply of oxygen.

Apparently an ample oxygen supply helps with the incessant complaining about messy trees.

Why complain?

Bad Tree Zone In Chernobyl

For all the good trees do, Chernobyl trees come with a warning.

Vasyl Yoschenko, a Ukrainian radioecologist, had planned the controlled burn to study how radioactive particulates would behave in a fire, and he knew about the risks represented by the nuclear contamination swirling overhead. 

The forest burned intensely for 90 minutes, releasing cesium-137, strontium-90, and plutonium-238, -239, and -240 in blasts of smoke and heat. In just one hour, the firefighters—and Yoschenko—could have been exposed to more than triple the annual radiation limit for Chernobyl’s nuclear workers.

We have forest fires in Oregon that are bad enough without being radio active forest fires.

Keep that in mind the next time you pick up a rake, or leaf blower, to clear your property. Breath deeply. You may feel pollen and allergic reactions, but it won’t be radioactive.

Look out of your window. If it’s a green window with trees you didn’t plant, be thankful. If you planted the trees, congratulations.

The next time you walk down a beautiful tree lined sidewalk on a hot day, think about knocking on a door and thanking whoever answers.

Don’t do it, just think about it. But if someone is out in their yard, give them a shout. They get it.

Show them you get it too. Green windows for better breathing. It’s an amazing sight for out of state people who decide to stay.