Calling Planet Earth! Today is Earth Day in the orchard and everywhere on the planet. It’s a day to celebrate the miracle of life on Earth. If you fiddle around with the letters in the word “earth”, you can come up with the word “three” (or close to it). Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Three is also a sacred number in many traditions. Could the word Earth simply be a take-off on the word three?

Planet Earth: Remove the letter E from planet and you have plant. Earth is the planet of plants. Remove the A from the word Earth and replace it with that E. Get rid of the H. Now rearrange the remaining letters and you have “plant a tree.”

It’s not a stretch to say that the tree—more than anything else—is what defines the Earth. Trees are the magic creatures that make earth what it is. And on Earth Day in many locations around the world, it’s the perfect time of year to plant a tree. If each of us planted a tree this spring—just one tree—we’d have 8.3 billion more trees on Planet Earth.

Unfortunately we did not plant any trees today. We did plant 34 on Sunday, but we’re out of town today so—I guess—we get a pass. We’ll plant more this coming weekend. But we did spend a bunch of time with trees yesterday and today. Yesterday we were at the amazing Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA. It’s an incredible place to go see trees. Today we celebrated in Rhode Island with friends who took us to Blithewold Arboretum along the shore of Narragansett Bay. At Blithewold walking along the shore, what did we encounter? An apple tree of course. Who insists that apple trees need well-drained soil and a gentle slope and a special pH? The apple tree we visited was growing about two feet from the high-tide line in a pile of salt and shells and seaweed. And it looked very happy to be there.

Later in the day we visited relatives across the bridge in Tiverton. What did we see there? More amazing trees of course. Happy Earth Day!