Last February I joined a Jewish Sunday school to talk about a Read for Trees program and to learn about Tu B’Shevat. This is a celebration of trees and I found that it could be thought of as the birthday of trees or the New Year of the Trees.

Tu B’Shevat translates as the fifteenth day of the month of Shevat and since the Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar this date moves around. This year it comes this Sunday and because the I’m going to celebrate this as New Year’s, I’m working on some tree resolutions. Next week I’ll write about some of them and keep reporting on how I’m doing with them. I’m up to thirteen and I’m not a great resolution keeper; I only made one this year and that was to keep up with this blog. So far so good.

Sunday I’ll have some tree fruits and nuts and wish all the Susie Forest trees a “Happy New Year” and because it’s also National Chocolate Cake Day I will also be celebrating that day in an appropriate way.

On Facebook this morning a city councilman passed on a story about a man whose bicycle was stolen while he was downtown. The thief cut down the tree to get the locked bike. Susie would like a new campaign with the slogan, “Save the Trees, Install Bike Rakes!” The bike would have been at the rack and the tree would still be making the area beautiful if the property owner had installed bike racks.