<\/p>\n
Read full article<\/a>\u00a0by reporter Rebecca L. Bennett\u00a0with photos by Rebecca L. Bennett,\u00a0<\/span>Hill Country View Magazine<\/strong>\u00a0<\/i>online Sunday, January 1, 2017<\/span><\/p>\n “As a kid, my family would stay in this little lake house in central Florida, and I would always climb this huge live oak on the shore,\u201d says Matt Mears, carefully pulling a pecan sapling out of a thin plastic pot. \u201cIt\u2019s covered in these beautiful resurrection ferns and draped with Spanish moss, and it has this long bough that stretches out over the water.\u201d<\/p>\n Matt places the young tree into a fresh hole dug beside the Blanco River in Kyle\u2019s Five Mile Dam Park and packs soil around it.<\/p>\n \u201cThat live oak is one of my favorite trees,\u201d he continues, stepping back and dusting off his hands. \u201cThrough forestry, I\u2019ve learned that people can develop these really deep emotional bonds to specific trees and have profound connections to nature.\u201d<\/p>\n Matt works as reforestation manager for Treefolks, an Austin-based nonprofit focused on strengthening communities through conservation initiatives. Founded in 1989, TreeFolks has played a critical role for nearly three decades in keeping Central Texas\u2019 urban forests healthy and educating landowners about the many ecological services provided by nature as a whole, and especially by trees. Read the full article<\/em><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read full article\u00a0by reporter Rebecca L. Bennett\u00a0with photos by Rebecca L. Bennett,\u00a0Hill Country View Magazine\u00a0online Sunday, January 1, 2017 “As a kid, my family would stay in this little…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-in-the-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t