In Your Yard

Morgan at work.

14-year-old high school freshman Tommy Morgan has opened his own landscaping business, BUD, BRANCH & BLOSSOM LANDSCAPING, LLC in East Lansing.

Where can you price out vinyl siding, learn how to make Creamy Hazelnut Maytag Vinaigrette with Rosemary & Fresh Ground & Roasted Cardamom, and see a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach? You can do all of those things (and lots more) at The Lansing Home & Garden Show, which opened yesterday and runs through Sunday at MSU’s Pavilion.

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.

ELi has learned that City of East Lansing staff has been allowing BWL to trim and cut down trees in East Lansing without the permits and oversight required by the City’s own municipal code.

This news comes as tonight City Council will consider a resolution in support of the trees, raising the question of whether such a resolution would, in practice, also be disregarded by City staff.

Does BWL have the right to come onto privately-owned property and trim or remove trees without the owner’s permission in the absence of a written legal easement? The BWL Director of Communications is suggesting the answer is “yes,” but an MSU property rights legal expert says the details would be complicated.

I asked Steve Serkiain, BWL’s Director of Communications, to answer three questions, on the record:

It hailed briefly in East Lansing on Saturday, October 4. Hail is an icy precipitation common in big thunderstorms. Hail is made up of falling layered balls of ice that are produced in cumulonimbus clouds that contain strong updrafts. The upward movement of air within the cloud is called an updraft and is a feature common to tornados and hailstorms.

East Lansing residents are seeing fewer tree trimming crews out working for Lansing’s Board of Water and Light (BWL), the major provider of electricity to East Lansing. But tensions remain very high between BWL and homeowners. Some homeowners who have already experienced damage to their properties from trimmer crews are being offered compensation by BWL. Others, worried about future damage, have joined a new yard sign campaign.