A hearty thanks to all our friends and supporters who voted, shared, liked, and posted in the Odwalla grant contest. Things look very hopeful! Odwalla will announce the winners this week. Stay tuned. 

 
One of the last remaining fruit orchards in Silicon Valley inspired photographer Angela Buenning Filo to turn her lens toward trees. Her 2003 visit to an abandoned plum tree orchard, beside the San Jose IBM campus on Cottle Road, led to a monumental project: a three year endeavor photographing each of the 1,737 trees. She explains, "I wanted to map these trees and find a way to hold them in time." Today, the orchard lives on in Buenning Filo's meticulously laid out photographic grid of the original trees, on permanent exhibit in San Jose City Hall.

 

Her latest photographic project, The Palo Alto Forest, is a continued effort to document and celebrate the trees around us. The project encourages the public to submit  photographs of their favorite tree and a six word story about the tree, which will be immediately posted to an on line gallery and displayed on the project's web site. The deadline for submissions is June 15th. The final project will be unveiled at the Palo Alto Art Center's grand reopening exhibit, Community Creates, this fall. 

 

"I wanted to think about how trees around us impact us," she explained. "Palo Alto is a place that honors and values trees. Our concept for The Palo Alto Forest was for people to choose a tree and honor it by photographing it and telling a story about it." So far, over 270 people have submitted photos and text.

 

Angela encourages tree photos that are personally significant, "I think it's interesting that people are posting trees that are so personal and specific to them, in their daily lives, in their yards, their parks. I'm amazed at the stories...always anxious to see the next one." She noted that City Arborist Dave Dockter recently posted a photo of a tree being driven to its new home in Heritage Park a few years ago. "That's now our family park!" she laughs. "And that's the tree that I run around with my one year old and my three year old."

 

Angela has photographed the Silicon Valley landscape for more than a decade, capturing the rapidly changing environment. Her work is on display at San Jose Mineta Airport, in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and she exhibits regularly. Click here to see more of her work.  

 

Meet Angela Buenning Filo on Canopy's next Tree Walk (Saturday June 9th, 10AM, Gamble Garden) and bring your camera to photograph trees at the same time.  

 

Upload your tree photographs and accompanying six word story to The Palo Alto Forest (click here) or you can email them to tree@paloaltoforest.org, before June 15th.

 

For the last five years, Canopy has engaged teens in the East Palo Alto community through a service-learning program that trains high school students to learn about, plant, care-for, and educate others about trees.  
 
Beyond learning marketable arboriculture skills and earning an hourly wage, Canopy's Youth Staff work together to improve their neighborhood schools, build local pride, and contribute to the economic, civic, and ecological renewal of their community.

Canopy congratulates George Nickings, Daniel Noriega-Diaz and Silvia Vazquez on a year of hard work, great learning and community impact!  

Each year Canopy volunteers and partners comb through Palo Alto neighborhoods to survey the health of young street trees. Young trees require extra care to ensure their survival in the urban environment.    
 
The Young Tree Care Survey begins on July 14th and we need help conducting individual neighborhood surveys as well as the following two-hour, group surveys:  
 
Hoover Park (2901 Cowper Street, Palo Alto, 94306)
Saturday, July 14, 2011, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Heritage Park (300 Homer Avenue Palo Alto, 94301)
Saturday, July 18, 2012, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM  
 
In addition to Canopy's on-site training, you can learn about the survey from our video (click here). Email  estefani@canopy.org to learn more or to sign up.

 

 
Have you noticed crawling caterpillars, delicate chrysalises, or fluttering moths around oaks? These are the California Oak Moths (Phryganidia californica), at different stages of their life cycle. Their population explodes every five to ten years following certain spring weather conditions. They attack oaks primarily and occasionally wander onto other shrubs and trees. There are two or three generations per year, the summer populations being the most damaging to trees.

Oak Moths are actually a normal part of live oaks' life cycle but seem alarming as their larvae can entirely defoliate a tree (image above). Fear not; unlike sudden oak death, defoliation caused by oak moth seldom, if ever, kills affected trees and the oaks recover.

For more information click here for the USDA publication: "A Field Guide to Insects and Diseases of California Oaks."