Purple Paint
Dear Readers,
Marking one’s property is an instinctual inclination. Cats spray. Dogs pee. Some other animals poop. William and I wanted to mark our property as well. As peeing on our trees is not an accepted legal form of marking one’s property in Pennsylvania, we decided to go with another route.
For those who own tantalizing lands for hunting, but are not entirely comfortable with letting people cross their boundaries, posted signs are the traditional way to go. In some states, however…Pennsylvania included…purple paint markings on a property’s perimeter are acknowledged as ‘no hunting, fishing, trapping, or overall trespassing’ signs. The paint markings must be 3 to 5 feet above the ground, at least 1’’ wide by 8’’ long in size, and spaced no more than 100 feet apart.
William and I decided to go with the purple paint when marking our property. See? No human excrement involved.
Being the nutsy environmentalists that we are, we didn’t want to use typical paint. Many paints have VOCs and are not good for the tree itself (paint basically clogs the tree’s pores with all of its chemically and plasticky compounds). Grant it, we would only be painting a 1’’ x 8’’ mark on the tree…which really is very small in the overall surface area of a mature tree…and probably would not harm the tree in any real significant way…but we are who we are and did what we did. We found an organic way to make purple paint for our trees~ and looked bonkers doing it. We still are not totally sure if it worked. But it was fun!