How great it must be to experience this town infused with all those memories!
Kentucky Coffee is nice. Ah yes, the bare trees in winter! I think the northerly part of Swan Pond could do with more plantings.
Are you able to donate to the Parkway because you will tend to it. I ask because Longcommon and Addison needs a tree very badly, but I did not think one could donate off one's own parkway where the parkways are concerned.
I think it would be great to get a clump of 3 trees and maybe a single one planted there. If the funds go to the RBHS tree bank you only have to pay for the tree, the kids do the planting, the village supplies the mulch and Forester expertise. I think that's the way to go because it get's the kids involved and they will see those trees grow there over the years. Then they can say "That's a tree your mother and I planted when we were in high school," etc. later on.
Back in the early fifties, when my buddy Tom Petrik and I were riding around on things like Cushman scooters and Harley 125s, all of which had dubious registrations as a matter of course, we could cut the lights and run into the triangles and hide in the understory - it was much more dense then - and the coppers would sail past and we'd laugh our asses off. Down at the Little Dam I had one of those steel milkman things they used to carry the bottles in, hanging by a rope where we could cool our Heinekins. The liquor store always sold you a case of Heinekins if you said it was for your Dad - kids supposedly drank Atlas Prager and other poison. Late at night, sitting down there with a cold one, fireflies everywhere - perfect. (That was after our girlfriends had to go home.) I remember sitting in my '50 Olds convert out under that big Hackberry and having her dad blink the porch light to tell her she had to come in. And I remember in winter, plowing driveways for Frank Martin's Pure Oil in his old jeep - I always did theirs for free to stay in their good graces. And swimming nights at the Coonley pool or even better, at the Golf Club. These hot, warm nights remind me of all that stuff. No drugs - that's what girlfriends were. Nothing softer than a Bernard Altman cashmere sweater...
Great word picture, Mr Spatny. If you have any more such pictures in your head, feel free to get them out and share them.
Of the trees listed above, about 7,8 yrs ago or so, I co-planted a Hackberry, a Shingle Oak, a Bur Oak, and a Kentucky Coffee Tree on Pine Av across the street from the eastern Pine av parking lot. So one can see them all together if one wanted to see them. I also planted there white pines and a maple among others. Unlike the rest of this bunch, the shingle oak is on the northern side of Pine direclty in front of the parking lot.
The shingle oak is probably the tallest of the bunch. The late Mr Drazan bought one, too, and planted it in front of his apt building on Pine (the tudor revival building) - when he owned it - after hearing of the cooperative planting program. He was a good Bohemian who knew the value of a good deal and he immediately knew that the cooperative planting program was a good deal and value after I explained it to him. That shingle oak, along with mine, are both doing fantastic. It seems to like this soil and climate.
btw,
This was the same Frank Drazan who was written up in the papers recently. He was a fine man who used his noggin and voice to provide an important counterpoint to local administrations' agendas throughout his life here.
http://rblandmark.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=3998&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=13&S=1
Yes, I distinctly recall Mr Drazan's recent letter to the Landmark, which included this memorable and timely line:
"Such insensitivity to the plight of our taxpayers. Many homes are unsalable because of high taxes."
May he rest in peace.
You all are veritable tree impresarios! So, Spatny, you are saying the students tend to the nursing aspect of the parkway trees planted by others on another parkway?
The shingle oak gives great screen because its leaves stay on all winter long. I will tell you what I would love to see more of: the shagbark hickory!
Spatny, I have never forgotten your telling me how on Longcommon when it started to rain, the drops could not reach you because of the tree canopy there. I thought of this the other day when I was standing under a tree from the rain. So, Longcommon has altered since then.
Catherine - the kids from the Eco club just plant the trees, with their advisor and the Village Forester to supervise. The school has a day in the fall when the kids do jobs around town, like paint fireplugs or lampposts, help seniors, etc. Regarding the canopied trees, in the fifties there were many streets like that. I think there is a short space on Burlington that is still overarched by elms, but in those days much of the village was like that. Riding a bike, a motorcycle or later a car - convertible of course - under those threes was really beautiful. Back then we had football games on Saturday, and so there were parades of cars and floats that went through town on Saturday morning and then to the field. Friday night we had pep rallies and a huge bonfire at the high school for which we scrounged up all kinds of old wood. People raked leaves into the streets and you smelled them burning at the curbs - bad for pollution, no doubt, but a sure harbinger of winter to come. Winter skating was on the river which I plowed with Frank Martin's jeep I used to clear driveways and start cars - and we had a trash barrel on the bank with a fire where you could get warm. The kids would show up on their own and start games, one bringing a bat, another a ball, no uniforms, choose up sides, no coaches, a torn piece of cardboard or linoleum for the bases, no grounds crews, etc. BUT LOTS OF FUN. All of it. No Title IX in those days, so the girls were the cheerleaders, sandwich makers (they took home ec and actually cooked things without a microwave) , they patched up our cuts, etc., and of course were wonderful girlfriends. When I moved back here I took my wife (a teacher) to RB so she could see where I went to school, and she was amazed at how great it all looked after half a century. She went to Von Steuben in the city, which has changed a lot now. I met her at Illinois, where I was a Deke and she lived in some small apartment housing and had her meals at a housing unit. I used to tell her that at RB, because of all the Bohemians that went there, we had lunches like Roast Duck or Svickova and dumplings, etc. Alas, she had the usual cafeteria stuff.
Mike T - I looked at those trees you planted and they are really great. Can't imagine the space without them. We need to work at raising funds to plant more - lots more. If I had a spare $100K I'd establish a program to put an additional $20K into this each year, and look for matching contributions to perpetuate it. As I drive around town I notice way too many homes with no trees out front, which really are gaping holes in the streetscape.
I notice the gaping holes on the streetscape as I go around town, too. I was thinking it would be a nice HS (volunteer hrs) project to create and maintain an inventory of all those holes. There cd be a spreadsheet with an entry for each property address and whether a tree is needed at that property or not. It would provide a worklist that we can bite off little by little. It might seem like a daunting task to get that arboreal coverage seen in the 50s, but, like a tree itself which starts small and grows big, before you know it, there could be a difference.
A comment on those trees on Pine (btw, before I planted those 5 pines there were no pines on Pine): when I saw how small they were when I purchased them, I thought, oh well, I guess my grandchildren would see an effect. But some of them are maybe three stories already.
Since the subject of planting trees in Riverside has been broached here, I will cross reference another post on trees. In that post I mentioned the benefits of trees along the railway which is seen by thousands of people each day.
http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic.php?id=87&page&replies=26
A big problem is a lot of those holes are on the parkways. The village policy is only to plant on parkways if the owner will care for the tree. Some people have even been offered free trees by the DPW as I understand it, and have declined them! So, we need a plan to present to maintain parkway trees that owners will not maintain.
Having a dedicated seasonal worker for tree watering, filling the gator bags on young trees, etc., is completely within the possibility of being accomplished, if adequate funds were allocated. Instead of caring for the elms and doing things like this we buy a $55,000 mobile shelf storage system and put it in the old youth center, where if we get a big snow the whole roof may collapse. (Why do we need that - where is the stuff right now?) If times are so tough and we have no money to maintain the landscape and trees, why do they spend money on stuff like this, or more software, or consultants, or whatever. Sure those things are nice to have, but when funds are limited everyone sets priorities, first things first. It's obvious what these board members feel is most important - namely giving the Village Manager what she wants.
We will probably lose upwards of 100 public trees this year - many full grown, mature trees, and if the cost of putting in a new, small 2.5" tree is $200 average, that is $20,000. So in the best of worlds, if 100 homeowners agreed to pay half, that would take $10K right there on the part of the village, and still no trees for the public parks, triangles, etc. But when you take out a 60 year old elm and replace it with a small tree, you really aren't getting ahead of the curve, you are falling further back. The buffer areas around the first divsion need more trees - already you can see the traffic on First and Ogden in summer that used to only be visible in winter. Desplaines/Woodside Road could use 20 new trees, maybe more. Many other areas need extensive reforestation.
Longcommon, the Big Ball Park, the triangles, the whole North end all need more trees, and this is before the ash borer gets here. And we should help homeowners that want to plant more trees on their private property as the old trees there come out - it's all one Village isn't it? All one tree canopy that make the oxygen we breathe and keeps us cooler in the summer? All one space that could again make this a green haven in a sea of concrete.? We are probably 400-500 trees short of making a meaningful dent in reforestation right now, in bringing the Village tree stock to where it should be. And the gap is increasing. That's $100K and then some more for maint. Then we need to spray for the gypsy moth, establish an ash replacement program using diverse species, and we are looking at about $250K-$500K needed "as soon as we can get it" as they said about condos.
On the surface that looks like a reason - a valid reason - to vote for the tax referendum. But does anyone really think that's where the taxes raised by that item would go? Not a chance. What we'd get instead would be PUDs and "gentrification" and the like. What needs to happen is first replace the people running on this Board and then let the new Board set the right priorities, and THEN look at what funds are needed. Giving this Board more money now would just go to more consultants and "experts" that would be used to legitimize more of the insane CBD development/congestion they still favor.
What we really need is one Riverside homweowner, perhaps a senior who owns a home and is living alone, and doesn't have a need to leave their property to family - to donate via a reverse mortgage scheme their property to a trust fund that would be solely used for reforesting Riverside and maintaining our tree stock. Nothing else. This should be completely separate from the Village government, a not-for-profit entity that would plant and maintain a guaranteed minimum number of trees every year under the direction of an advisory Board made up of the Village Forester and representatives of the LAC and Olmsted Society. The reverse mortgage would allow for the senior to remain in his/her home as long as they wanted to, and would provide some immediate and regular funding for this program that would provide a living legacy they could begin to enjoy immediately. Any lawyer out there that can help me draft such thing? I think I know one or possibly two residents that would consider this.
And then there is this:
Gypsy moth could pose problem in 2009
Riverside could see defoliation on south side, near river
By BOB UPHUES
Editor
Riverside's forester has warned that unless the village acts to control the gypsy moth population next spring, defoliation of the village's tree stock in areas where the pest has shown up in great numbers could occur in summer 2009.
Forester Michael Collins said recently that gypsy moths infest trees across the village, particularly in the south and areas along the Des Plaines River. Traps set this year have captured high numbers of gypsy moths, Collins said, numbers well beyond what the Illinois Department of Agriculture has set for infestation.
"If you get 10 [moths] per trap the area's considered infested," Collins said. The highest count I got was 40 on the south side of town and the lowest was 20 [on the north side]."
There's been no significant defoliation this year, but Collins said he assumed there would be next year, since adults are now laying eggs that will hatch next spring.
According to the Illinois Department of Agriculture Web site the gypsy moth was imported to the United States in the 19th century for silkworm breeding. The moths ended up infesting forests on the East Coast and have been steadily moving west.
Male gypsy moths are brown with black markings with a wingspan of about 1.5 inches. Female moths, about 2 inches, are white or cream-colored but cannot fly.
Collins said that the moths prefer oak trees but will move along to other species as well. The caterpillars feed on green foliage and in large numbers can, according to information found on the University of Illinois Extension Web site, "completely defoliate host trees over a wide geographic area."
The last time Riverside did gypsy moth trapping on any large scale was in 2005, when the highest trap count in Riverside was 12, Collins said. Other infestations were found in the forest preserves on either side of First Avenue from 31st Street to Ogden Avenue.
Those numbers prompted the Illinois Department of Agriculture in May 2006 to conduct spraying mainly along the river in an effort to slow the gypsy moth population's growth.
After a temporary slow down, however, the moth population in Riverside is bigger than ever. And with the Department of Agriculture focusing on population control farther west and southwest, communities like Riverside are left to deal with the infestations by themselves, Collins said.
"The population is always going to build back up," Collins said.
If Riverside wants to do its own spraying (which is done via helicopter), it could cost as much as $70,000, according to Collins.
But, he added, "there's no funding for this. It's something the board would have to allocate."
The board has promised to allocate more money toward maintaining its tree stock in areas along the river if a tax referendum question succeeds at the polls this fall.
Village Manager Kathleen Rush said that if the referendum is successful, money earmarked for maintenance of wilderness areas would likely be allocated for gypsy moth spraying if the board deems it a high-priority item.
Meanwhile, Riverside's trees are faced with other potential threats, including the emerald ash borer, which has made appearances in the north, west and south suburbs. Last week signs of an ash borer were found on a tree in Oak Park. According to Collins, it's simply a matter of time before that pest appears in Riverside, though it has stayed away so far.
"We might as well have a big bull's eye on our heads," Collins said.
Collins also said the cool, wet spring has helped Dutch elm disease spread in 2008. After losing only some 30 trees to Dutch elm in all of 2007, Riverside has already lost around 55 in 2008 and is on pace for another year like 2005, when Riverside lost 87 elms.
Collins urged residents to help renew the tree stock by participating in the village's cooperative tree planting program, where residents and the village share the cost of planting trees in the public parkway.
"Trees are a renewable resource," Collins said. "Although invasive insects pose a threat, if we get out and plant some trees, we'll have those for future generations to enjoy."
Three weeks ago the gypsy moths were so thick in the FP at 47th and Harlem they were getting inside my shirt when I tried to eat lunch there. This makes what I wrote about above even more important. We are surrounded by Forest preserves that will harbor all these critters, We need to stop dividing our tree stock into "public" trees on the parkways, which are the only ones covered by the Cooperative Tree Planting Program, and look at all the trees of Riverside as a total village asset. Come on lawyers, help me structure a program that can attract tax-deductible contributions from all kinds of sources - public, private, corporate. We need to act now - no one else is.
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