The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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October 29, 2008

Mike Pound: Maple Leaf City has its own Johnny Appleseed

By Mike Pound

Globe columnist

mpound@joplinglobe.com

If you tell Roberta Koontz that she’s a Johnny Appleseed of sorts for Carthage maple tree fans, she’ll laugh at the comparison.

Sure, in the past 13 years Roberta and her hard-working staff at the Pinewood Nursery have planted nearly 400 maple trees in Carthage, but compare her to Johnny Appleseed? Well, she says, that just might be going a little bit too far.

What Roberta has done, she’ll tell you, is a bit of community service that is particularly appropriate this fall coming on the heels of a devastating ice storm that took out hundreds of trees in Carthage.

“It’s a community project. It’s a joint effort with the Convention and Visitors Bureau,” she said.

The project Roberta is talking about is a deal that she and the CVB board put together for interested Carthage folks. Pinewood Nursery offered six varieties of maple trees for sale at $40 each. That price includes not just the tree, but the cost of having it planted, fertilized and mulched. Those who know about such things, like my wife, tell me that $40 to have a maple tree planted in your yard is a bargain.

“We’re not making much money on it,” Roberta admitted.

But that was never the point. The point was to send a bunch (I think trees come in bunches) of maple trees to folks in Carthage that wanted them. My mother-in-law ordered three trees for her children as gifts. That’s how we got a tree and how I found about Roberta’s deal and why, Tuesday morning, I drove 15 miles east of Carthage on Highway 96 to talk to Roberta at her nursery.

Roberta told me that this is the third time since 1995 that she and the CVB board have offered the tree deal. This time around, she said, about 125 trees have been sold and planted. Well, the last batch of the 125 trees will be planted on Friday. It’s taken a couple of weeks for Roberta and her hard-working crew — Gary Balfour, Ben Probert and Chip Marsden — to get the trees delivered and planted.

The trees have been purchased by a combination of homeowners and businesses. Roberta said several large companies — including McCune-Brooks Regional Hospital — purchased a large number of trees while a host of individuals purchased trees to replace those they lost in the ice storm.

The tree my mother-in-law bought for us was planted in our front yard. I think it’s a neat deal. Hopefully I’ll be able to spend the next 20 years or so watching a tiny maple tree grow alongside of the other large maple tree that sits in our front yard.

The tree also serves as a replacement, of sorts, for the gigantic maple tree in our yard we lost during last year’s ice storm. That tree, which was easily 70 years old, pretty much served as the anchor for the other maples in our yard. It’s been more than nine months since we had the tree cut down and the yard still looks funny without it.

If it’s possible to miss a tree, I miss that maple.

The sad news for folks who missed out on the deal is the $40 offer is done for now. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stop by Pinewood Nursery if you get a chance. It’s a neat place. And if you do, you might want to check out the two large cornstalk horses sitting out in front. If you’ve never seen a cornstalk horse, let me describe one to you: It’s a horse — now, follow me here — made out of cornstalks. Roberta first started making the horses back in the late 1980s and garnered a lot of attention for them. They’re pretty neat, is what they are.

Before I left Roberta’s nursery Tuesday I told her that, this weekend, I was going to take a picture of our 10-year-old daughter, Emma, standing next to our baby maple tree. I told Roberta that I planned to take a picture of Emma standing by the tree for at least the next 10 years. I told Roberta that I had her to thank for the memories the tree will create.

Maybe it’s not Johnny Appleseed stuff, but it’s still pretty cool.

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