8.3.11 LOUA Meeting

We had our monthly LOUA meeting this past Wednesday at our house. It was one packed meeting, and we weren’t even all there, missing a few members who were unable to attend; we may need to find a bigger space in the future! Our merry little band has grown to 14 members. It’s great that so many people are interested in the Arboretum. I won’t bore you with all the bits about the budget and volunteer hours, but there were some other pretty exciting parts of the agenda.

One of the discussions revolved around the amount of trash that is getting into the ravine through the run-off from I-71. The clean-up on Saturday showed just how much trash comes in with heavy, torrential rains. We really need to stop the garbage before it comes into the ravine; picking up trash around Silver Drive and I-71 will only alleviate some of the problem as most of the garbage is washed down from I-71 and therefore, not easily picked up.

We’ve also made good progress on the two walking tours of significant trees within the Arboretum. There will be both a long and short route. All the possible trees have been identified, so it’s now a matter of creating a path from tree to tree for a lovely walk that offers a nice mix of all the types of trees we are lucky enough to have in our neighborhood. The trees highlighted in the walking tours will be the best, easily-viewed examples within the Arboretum. We also received the city’s list of places where trees can be planted in the fall. With an exact number of trees, we can begin to work on figuring out what trees we need to have at hand: how many oaks, how many hickories, etc. This is really coming together. I can’t wait until that first tree is ready to be planted as I know it will be a celebration and culmination of all of our hard work.

The best part of the meeting (at least in my opinion!) was seeing Jake Boswell’s sample of the markers for the trees. The design isn’t quite finalized, so I can’t show you just yet what they will look like. I promise I will as soon as we have the final version. But I must admit that the marker is beautiful, informative and best of all, inexpensive. These are the markers that will be placed by the significant trees on the walking tours, giving those on the walk a little bit of information about the tree: species, common name, the like.

I think that about covers it.

Until next time!