not-so-free tree

Some well meaning hippie gave Friday a tree this last weekend. We were at the Puppet Parade for the Out the Box Festival, a strange and beautiful event, when a woman dressed as a tree made out of recycled plastic bags started gathering all the (wide-eyed) kids around while her minions handed out Cape Ash saplings.
A free tree accompanied by instant environmental guilt and all-consuming 4 yr old anxiety.

'Mum, I must water my tree.'
'Mum, if I don't water the tree it'll DIE Mum.'
'I didn't water the tree today Mum, I PROMISED that lady I'd water the tree.'

Really? This is how we teach small children about greening the planet? Small children who, I might add, live in a really built up urban area, few with gardens large enough to accommodate a 15 metre tall tree.

It's a lovely sentiment, seemingly good activism, handing out trees at public events. But not so much for small kids.
My Mum was a primary school teacher in the 90's and she used to get really cross when people lectured Grade 1's about the hole in the ozone layer. Just one pfffft of an aerosol and ka-zam! hole in sky, searing heat, all your mummies and doggies burnt to a crisp die die die ...!

Sure we should teach out kids social responsibility in all forms from as early as possible, but I don't agree with burdening them with guilt about things they can't actively influence yet.
Get them to recycle - yes. Teach them not to litter - goes without saying. Explain about trees and oxygen and green spaces - of course.
But only give them what they can manage. A tree in a can is not such a thing.

And so, as a nice conscious middle-class mummy, I find myself watering the tree, worrying about the tree, appealing to friends and family to adopt the tree.
It doesn't even seem to be a Western Cape native or I'd plant it in the forest.

Cape Ash tree anyone? Free to a good home.