Some cried foul because the boy’s grandmother had some political ties and had once before sought to have one of the stately trees cut down because it interfered with her pool. Others criticized the city’s decision to demand only a $1,000 donation from the family for new, “less allergenic’’ plantings to replace what might be $143,000 in city property. “It looks like the future of Milford will be concrete and chlorine,’’ said Christine Simpson, whose house faces the doomed trees....And don't blame the courts. It's the city. Do you think the courts should oppose the city? It's quite unlikely that they will. Isn't the best approach for the neighbors to shame Glennon by getting newspapers to run articles like this one?
“It’s just a shame,” said Ms. Simpson, who asserted that Mrs. Glennon’s family was “using the child thing’’ and not acting in good faith. “There are hickory trees all around the house, and it’s just the three trees over the pool she wants out,’’ Ms. Simpson said.
Don't you think Glennon ought to move if she doesn't like the trees? Trees are immensely valuable to everyone in the neighborhood.
Mrs. Glennon ... said valuing the trees at $143,000, as one member of the tree commission did, was absurd. She said only one of the trees was there when she moved into the neighborhood four decades ago and that the other two shot up on their own. “Do you think vagabond trees are worth that?’’ she asked.Vagabond trees! Ha.
Anyway, you'll be glad to know they've found a nut-free school for the boy to attend.
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39 comments:
I'm with Sippican... Nut allergies tend to be really severe and life-threatening. Its not just sneezing and wheezing. Trees add a lot to a the quality of a neighborhood, but removing three trees in exchange for a kid's health/life is an eminently worthy sacrifice.
I applaud the victory by the woman. According to the article the woman owns the land and the city only has an easement on it. Anytime a home owner wins a case allowing them to cut down trees on THEIR OWN PROPERTY, is a victory for all of us and for all who believe in private property. These cities strong arm home owners all the time with ridiculous rules on wetlands and trees etc...
My grandmother, when she was rather old, had two very large oak trees in her front yard cut down. She was tired of the acorns. I think that was wrong.
But I will support the cutting down of mulberry trees.
"Anyway, you'll be glad to know they've found a nut-free school for the boy to attend."
I'm not sure it qualifies as "nut free" if that family now attends.
-that's alot of axe handles for 143K
But I will support the cutting down of mulberry trees.
I hate those things. They spring up all over my yard. I take special pleasure in hatcheting them to the ground and spraying Round-up on the leaves that pop back up a couple weeks later.
As for the grandmother, I have to agree with SC that anaphalactic shock is no joke, and I also agree with Sloanasaurus that whether or not I like her decision, I support the her private property rights.
Here's another interesting, more lawy article about cutting down trees. This one invokes the Monty Python-esque spectacle of little blind children running around knocking in to trees or impaling themselves on low branches--a spectacle I would certainly find very amusing.
Lawy doesn't really work does it? Leagally definitely won't work. Rulesy? Suey? (ha!) Suity? Too much like sooty.
"Or have kids devolve[d] to be ever more fragile?"
Maybe we're just better at saving them when they go into shock. They almost die, so now they have to be super-careful. Maybe in the past they just died, and the issue of being careful was neatly avoided.
"...so now they have to be super-careful."
Still doesn't explain the part about why the trees over the pool are the only ones they are worrying about.
Also, the article does not say the child went into anaphalactic shock over the hickory nuts from the trees near the pool or elsewhere on the grandmother's lawn.
It says the child is 3 and cannot be taught not to touch nuts yet.
Plus, it's a pain to maintain a pool with trees growing over it. I'd think more of the property rights victory if it had been phrased this way, no allergic grandchild needed to play a role.
Frankly, if no easement existed I'd consider pool maintenance a legitimate reason for getting rid of the trees in question. But ... While I agree she has the right to cut down trees on her property, I have a sneaking suspicion that the easement mentioned isn't something new - if you agreed to cede control of that area to the city up front, you can't just change the rules in the middle of the game unless the easement contains such a right.
"But Una Glennon, the boy’s grandmother, said that “as much as we love the trees,” getting rid of them was a matter of life and death"
If the environment at her home is that deadly for the grandson, he shouldn't be there, period. Has CPS gotten involved here yet?
"When a neighbor told the family this spring that the three trees towering over her pool are nut trees, Mrs. Glennon said, she asked the city to remove them"
I have a tough time believing this was a revelation.
I'm with TCD on the nut allergy business - does anybody here younger than mid-30s remember ANY schoolmate suffering from this allergy? I'd never even heard of it until I became a parent in the late 90s.
Why did I suspect granny was a Democrat?
Why did I suspect that eventually, someone--I suspect a Republican--would turn a perfectly nice conversation partisan?
I just don't know how my generation ever got to adulthood. We used to use mercurachrome, eat peanuts, learn without Ritalin, ride bikes without helmuts, stay out in the sun, hang out in houses with smoking adults, and stand up on the back seat floorboard going down the highway.
Anyway if its life or death she and that kid need to be out of there, staying around reveals it to be a farce.
PT is a Buddhist with a sitting practice, a relatively uncompromised hammerhead, a good solid lefty, once the dearest and most beautiful of lovers, now a respectable suburban matron with a witty husband and beautiful offspring of her own. I was trying to plan the food for a Grand Canyon trip, and bitched something about how 'in my day' we just ate, and if you didn't like something, you held silence about it and found something else to eat. (I was trying to figure out how to deal with somebody's food allergy for 16 days of camping in the bottom of the Canyon.) She remarked about wheat allergies, "I've never encountered them except in middle-aged women from Boulder with a broad support network. Take away the spouse equivalent and the 'girl friends' and the allergy disappears. Or at least, you stop hearing about it."
While I do wonder about the landowner's true motive for cutting down the trees, I am surprised how many people believe those who say they have allergies such as this are making it up.
My sister-in-law is 45. Like the boy in the story, she and her family discovered, the hard way (anaphalactic shock), that she was highly allergic to walnuts. A couple of years later, when she was old enough to chew gum, they found out, the same hard way, that she was allergic to spearmint. That was about 40 years ago, folks. People didn't talk about it much then, but people didn't talk about most illnesses, diabetes and cancer come to mind.
A good friend, now in her 60's, is one of those people highly allergic to peanuts. 40+ years ago, not long after they got married, her husband thought it would be ok to bake some peanut butter cookies because she was sleeping in the next room. While he was busy baking, she was busy choking to death thanks to the aroma.
Once awake, she couldn't cry out, so she rolled herself off the couch, grabbing at a cocktail table, as she fell thereby making enough noise with the falling table and stuff on it to attract his attention. She was very near death by the time they got to the hospital.
Elizabeth- I can't help It. I saw the gist of the article and assumed granny was a DEM seeking the guvmint's intervention. Then I read the full article and said" Shazamm, I am right again.
Steve:
George Carlin has a bit where he claims "kids today wear helmets for everything but jerking off".
AJ, the Republican city officials are going along. This is not a partisan thing, but as you say, you can't help it. I realize that. It's reflex, isn't it?
stever, thanks for the lovely remembrance of my childhood.
Mike(and Sip): Just a quick word of caution. Check your local code. Some municipalities have banned Poplars. Maybe the hybrids are different. I dunno.
Random Thought: If you really hate your neighbors, and the wind always blows their way, plant cottonwoods as close to the edge of your property as possible.
Mike: There are sprays and/or injectible hormones (such as "Snipper") that stop trees from fruiting. Maybe they'll work on your Locust tree and you can leave it be. It's worth looking into considering the considerable expense of removing the tree and the loss of shade.
That said, about the only clean, reasonably broad tree I can think of is a Shademaster Thornless Honeylocust. It'll grow fast enough but its shade is generally considered light/medium. I've been told you can shear them when they're young and they'll get a denser canopy.
I've read about Marshall's Seedless Ash but I've never seen one for sale.
Here's more information than you could possibly want.
Your tax dollars at work!
Is there a doctor here who could weigh in on whether the trees could, by dropping nuts into the swimming pool, make the pool toxic to the kid?
If that's the case, then it would make sense that the three hickory trees by the pool would be different from, and merit different treatment than, the trees not over-hanging the pool.
Sip: Yes, I was thinking of the Lombardy Poplars. I know they are banned around here. What I don't know is whether Mike's local authorities can be trusted to be so discriminating about "Poplars." Mike should find out ahead of time.
P.S. I've got a backyard absolutely brimming with straight Black Walnut. Sadly, it goes to firewood. Oh, well.
Sip (and Mike): Let me second "Plan C." We have an October Glory that's a reasonably fast grower, getting broader and absolutely gorgeous. In fact, our next-door neighbor asked what it was and planted one a week later!
But it does put off a lot of helicopter seeds. They're called Samaras, just like the city in Iraq, I think. Go figure.
Another vote here for Thornless Honey Locust. We have a gorgeous 40' specimen in the front yard. It produces beautiful yellow leaves in the Fall and no pods.
And allow me to rant about Sweetgum, one to avoid at all costs. It is a nice shade tree with a lovely flame shape and pretty Fall color, but it will bombard you with nasty spiky fruits made of some indestructible matter.
We are fortunate not to have any in our yard, but sadly, they abound in our area. We've known the evil buggers to send retirees to the hospital from slipping on those fruit pods.
Sweetgum -- teenage arboreal hoodlums.
"I am surprised how many people believe those who say they have allergies such as this are making it up"
Can't speak for everybody, but I certainly didn't mean to imply anybody was making up the allergy stuff. I'd just never heard of it until a few years ago, and since schools and airlines and such are concerned about it and didn't used to be, that suggests to those of us outside the medical profession that this sort of thing is on the increase, so what's the deal? Did the nuts mutate? Did we? Did we stop using some pesticide that controlled the problem in the past? Have we broadened the definition to include lots of people in no danger (or only remote theoretical danger) of shock, drastically increasing the number of people "affected"? I talk to people all the time now who have asthma and use an inhaler when they experience the slightest irritation of throat or lungs. By contrast, in 5th grade a kid in my class had an asthma attack that was one of the most frightening and unforgettable things I've ever seen - I honestly thought he was going to die as he desparately sucked on an inhaler trying not to suffocate. I will say in this particular case the fact that they continued to bring the grandson back to such an allegedly dangerous environment makes me skeptical.
" Unfortunately, it's a prodigious pod producer"
Don't be going to sleep around that thing.
"And allow me to rant about Sweetgum, one to avoid at all costs"
I have one in my yard. He's right - avoid at all costs.
Look, guys, some of you need to show a little bit more sympathy for those who are genuinely and dangerously allergic to nuts. Yes, none of us heard about this kind of thing when we were kids. Yes, it does indeed seem like there is a genuine surge in these allergies. But pining for the good old days doesn't change that.
The fact is, we really don't understand why the surge is happening! There are theories, of course. One is that we keep our environment too clean, so our immune systems don't learn to distinguish between real disease and benign things. Another is that baby formula contains extracts from peanuts that might be causing the sensitization. There are theories, anecdotal evidence, but no real answers.
If cutting down these three trees truly solves the problem for this kid---and can any of you credibly argue that's not the case?---then that's exactly what they should be able to do. It is frankly absurd to suggest that those trees are so precious that the woman ought to move out of her own house instead of cut them down.
I'm highly skeptical of the "nut-free" school.
@Elizabeth said...
Why did I suspect that eventually, someone--I suspect a Republican--would turn a perfectly nice conversation partisan?
Actually, perhaps the original NYT article introduced partisanship by mentioning the party affiliations of the protaganist and the mayor, while referring to Milford as a "Republican-run city."
I live on the border between Milford and a neighboring "Democrat-run" city, and I was a more than a little jarred by the injection of political affiliations into the story, as there is very little discernable difference between the two parties at the local level in this part of Connecticut. It felt like an attempt to create a little extra drama consistent with the Times's national political coverage, but it just doesn't seem to be in tune with the realities of Milford's local politics.
Local party affiliation around here seems to be much more a matter of traditional machine politics, rather than actual ideology. Both local parties seem much more interested in how to take advantage of the Kelo decision to facilitate pet projects, rather than engaging in traditional Democrat/Republican debates.
Hi, this seems to be a lively group. I arrived here just now searching for the Milford or Calhoun variety of Thornless Honeylocust, the pods and seeds of which, when ground into flour, are reported by Russell Smith (author of "Tree Crops") to be excellent in muffins, breads, etc. And honeylocust pods in general are great livestock food with protein concentrations equivalent to oats or barley, and documented yields up to 400 bushels per acre. It grows fast. Also, it was rated the hardiest tree in Roosevelt's shelterbelt program, hardy in almost any soil under 5000 feet, in ice, wind, etc. I grew up in Montana, and have been nursing the idea that (as an anti-global-warming tactic) those miles and miles of useless sagebrush around our old place would be mightily improved by honeylocust groves. "Improves any pasture" Smith said. At a sustainablity fair in Livingston, I passed out several dozen packets of honeylocust seeds to area ranchers, but would prefer propagating the Milford or Calhoun variety. Anyone know where they might be found?A source of seed?
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