In an effort to put young people back to work, the Nutmeg State’s planning to use—wait for it—trees.

Connecticut’s Labor officials are going straight up Franklin Roosevelt on us this summer (remember his Civilian Conservation Corps? You learned all about it in 10th grade American History). They launched the Connecticut Conservation Corps Tuesday in an effort to create a whole bunch of summer jobs for unemployed young people of the 18-25 year persuasion. They’ll be building roads, improving outdoor state-owned areas like parks, trails and medians and you got it: tree planting.

The Corps will start out with 60 members, all CT residents, at 28 hours a week. The AP has more.

Meanwhile (on the same day, in fact) our fair legislators passed an expansion of the CT Small Business Express program: it’ll increase assistance to larger (up to 99 employees instead of the previous 50) and out-of-state companies working in Connecticut. It’s a pot of $100 million over two years: 736 businesses have already applied for the program which will offer lengthened and increased business loans. Read more here.

Here’s hoping all those trees and an injection of cash for smallish businesses will provide a much needed boost.