Home and Garden

Tensions with electrical utility provider Board of Water and Light (BWL) remain high in parts of East Lansing, especially in old-growth neighborhoods like Oakwood (where I live) and Glencairn. But at a recent Oakwood potluck, I talked to a neighbor who has had overall a positive experience with BWL coming to trim his family’s trees. So I asked that neighbor, Nate Stevenson, to share his story with our readers.

As BWL’s cutting, and cutting down, of trees appears to be picking up in the old-growth neighborhoods of East Lansing, City Council is set on Tuesday night to vote on a resolution in support of the city’s trees. Meanwhile, the red-and-white yard signs that carry a legal warning to BWL are showing up in greater numbers around the city.

Each fall, monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) from East Lansing fly south to the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. Butterflies that mature during the late summer in East Lansing and other habitat east of the Rocky Mountains migrate thousands of miles south to overwinter in the Mexican bioreserve before heading north again in the spring. They get as far north as the Great Plains before laying their eggs and dying. The Great Plains’ offspring of the East Lansing original butterflies then continue the species’ migration north, back to the northern habitat.

On June 19^th representatives from seven neighborhood associations came together at a meeting hosted by the Harrison Meadows Association. The other six neighborhoods participating were Walnut Heights, The Crossings, Shaw Estates, Whitehills, Abbott Parkside, and Pinecrest. They heard from Cathy DeShambo of East Lansing Public Works who is leading the city’s response to problems caused by growing deer herd size and encroachment into the residential neighborhoods of the city.  These problems include health and safety concerns and widespread property damage.