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General News: Trees Honored on Arbor Day

A small crowd gathered for the Arbor Day ceremony.
A small crowd gathered for the Arbor Day ceremony.
Abby Mayer's Alphorn is a big attraction on Arbor Day.
Abby Mayer's Alphorn is a big attraction on Arbor Day.
In front of a newly-planted sugar maple tree (l to r) Andrea Hamburger, Floranne Moulton, Kate Goodspeed, Sally Wortmann, Mary Ann Rose O'Dell, and Barbara Gosda.
In front of a newly-planted sugar maple tree (l to r) Andrea Hamburger, Floranne Moulton, Kate Goodspeed, Sally Wortmann, Mary Ann Rose O'Dell, and Barbara Gosda.
April 27, 2009

The road up to the American Legion post in Cornwall’s town hall park will soon be shaded with beautiful sugar maple trees thanks to several years of effort by the Cornwall Garden Club and the Cornwall Conservation Advisory Committee.

This year, to mark Arbor Day, each of these groups donated a maple tree, bringing a total of seven to create a tree-lined allee along the road. The sugar maple trees are known for the sap that runs through them in the spring and for their spectacular red and orange foliage in the fall.

At a ceremony outside the American Legion on Friday, Cornwall Garden Club president Andrea Hamburger spoke about the abundance of trees that thrived in the area when Henry Hudson sailed past Cornwall in 1609. Hamburger quoted from the journal of shipmate Robert Juett, who wrote about the great variety of trees he observed along the banks of the river. He singled out a tree he called “sweet wood” and Hamburger said she believed that he was referring to the sugar maple.

Cornwall’s tree warden Kate Goodspeed was also on hand for the Arbor Day ceremony and she talked about plans to plant as many as 23 new trees along Main Street and Hudson Street.

Garden Club member Sally Wortmann also said a few words to the group of 20 or so people who stood in the warm sunshine to praise trees. Wortmann, a retired teacher, lead the group in reading a poem by Joyce Kilmer that praises trees. The event ended after Abby Mann, dressed in his full Alpine regalia, played a song on the Alphorn, a ten-foot long traditional instrument from Switzerland.

Here’s the poem:

TREES

By Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

"Trees" was originally published in Trees and Other Poems. Joyce Kilmer. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1914.


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