New Batavia group works to preserve trees

The name leaves no doubt about what this group wants us to do - Value Our Trees.

It's a subgroup of the Conservation and Garden Department of the Batavia Woman's Club and has been busy making the community aware of the value of trees the past two years after saving a beautiful piece of land on Batavia High School grounds.

In a fairly common theme across the Tri-Cities' school districts the past decade or more, the school board was essentially doing what it was supposed to do - find more space for the district to carry out its athletic programs.

The Batavia Arboretum sits at the corner of a vast area of athletic fields, facing Main Street on that side of the school property. By any standard, it is an attractive natural setting.

Value Our Trees was formed to oppose the athletic field expansion into that area, and has since focused on making the arboretum an educational setting. It's something the group believes arboretum founder Jim Hoover, a biology teacher who has since left the district, would have wanted.

"To that end, we are working to raise approximately $2,000 for a permanent memorial plaque that will list all those from whom trees were planted," said group member Rosemary Henders.

The group is partnering with Davey Trees, which is donating tags to attach to each tree to list genus and species, as part of the arboretum plan.

"Davey Trees hopes to eventually hold communitywide educational programs in the arboretum on topics such as proper planting of trees, proper mulching techniques, and others," Henders said.

Value Our Trees went about its business of creating tree awareness in a scientific manner, using tags from the Morton Arboretum to tag a large number of trees in Batavia and calculating their value to air quality, energy reduction, increased property values and carbon reduction.

Other than the high school arboretum, the fine work of this group, which tagged 129 trees throughout Batavia, is probably most notable with the trees on the Batavia Library property.

A brave lady:

Teri Fuller of Geneva will be among 100 honorees "who are making a difference in the fight against cancer in inspiring and often revolutionary ways."

That's how Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center describes Fuller and the others it will honor in Boston on May 24.

Fuller was chosen from a list of 700 nominees for her work with the Young Survival Coalition, a group educating and working with young women with breast cancer. She also works with one-on-one support groups and co-founded END Breast Cancer Illinois as part of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.

Fuller knows all too well what this all means. She was the 10th woman on her mother's side of the family to inherit the breast cancer gene and was diagnosed at age 31 when she had a 9-month-old daughter.

Because she didn't want the same fate of her mother, who died at age 31, Fuller underwent a bilateral mastectomy, chemotherapy and preventive removal of her ovaries.

Hoping not a trend:

So, specialty clothing retailer Aeropostale files for bankruptcy and it means a fairly big store in the Geneva Commons is closing.

We're gun shy about seeing any retailer closing in a mall setting around here because we've seen what it can mean if it becomes a trend that others follow.

With that, all we can say at this point is … uh, oh.

Atop the hotel:

This may be a safe assumption: The new flagpole atop the Hotel Baker in downtown St. Charles makes Old Glory fly higher than at any other point in the Tri-Cities area.

You can see the flag flapping in the wind from just about any area near downtown St. Charles. In standing near the river and having to look over the top of the new construction on First Street, I could still see the flag.

A couple of weeks ago, workers using cranes removed the old antennae at the top of the landmark hotel to make way for the new flagpole from Flaglady Company in Elk Grove.

It stopped traffic and caught the eye of just about anyone near downtown that day, and the end result is great.

Leases galore:

Geneva businessman Mike Simon might have a case of writer's cramp from signing off on new leases for his storefronts along Third Street.

He's signed five new ones since the start of the year, causing him to send along a note with a theme he has espoused for decades - "Downtown Geneva is a great place to be."

I've mentioned a couple of these new businesses - Royal Wren, a gourmet/kitchen store, and Green Envee, an organic skin care store, - in past columns.

The others are Jorie & June, a clothing boutique; Vineyard Chic, a kitchen showcase store; and Sweet Natalie's Gluten Free Bakery's expansion into an upstairs portion of their existing site.

So shoppers aren't hunting around for Vineyard Chic on Third Street, it should be noted that this store is actually on James Street, next to the Nosh restaurant.

dheun@sbcglobal.net