jessica – Page 11

Yard of the Month – July 2011

Rose and Ed Stone of 1807 Salford celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on July 9th, and they have lived in Lazybrook for 41 of those years. Not only do they live in the neighborhood, but Rose’s mother lives on Millwood and her brother lives on Widdicomb, making living in Lazybrook a real family affair.

Their lovely home has great curb appeal. Two large staghorn ferns frame a big oak tree with a smiling face sculpture on the trunk. (Ed recently divided the Texas-bred staghorn ferns into ten separate plants.) Begonias in planters and hanging baskets and a variety of roses and beautiful annuals bloom across the front yard. Ed always cared for the yard himself until a recent health problem caused him to hire a lawn service. He wasn’t happy with the results and now, back in good health, he’s taking care of the yard again himself.

The Stone’s house doesn’t see a lot of traffic since it sits near the end of the cul-de-sac on Salford, but it’s worth taking a drive by to see this pretty yard. Congratulations Rose and Ed, and thanks for being good neighbors for 41 years!

June Security Update

Security

Citizens on Patrol Hours Logged

April 2011 – 72.25
May 2011 – 62.25

I appreciate the continued support of our patrollers.We are looking for more volunteers to join our Citizens on Patrol program to help do our part to protect ourselves and our neighbors. If you are interested please send an email to security@lazybrook.org to learn more.

Crime in the Neighborhood

5/10 – Burglary, 2000 Lazybrook, 10:45AM broke gate locks
5/17 – Scam reported, 2500 Lazybrook, three people with no identification were posing as power company tree trimmers and wanted the home owner to let them enter the back yard, they were denied entry and became more persistent even threatening fines if they could not enter the back yard, owner called cops and persons drove off
5/17 – Theft, 2000 Crystal, 11PM
5/19 – Burglary, 1800 Seamist, 2PM
5/25 – Burglary, 1800 Millcreek, 10AM
5/26 – Burglary, 1800 Tattenhall, 2PM
6/15 – Theft, 2400 Brookmere, 1AM
6/18 – Suspicious person in back yard, 2300 Brookmere 3:45AM

Please call HPD to report all crimes and get a case number, this is how we are assigned manpower from HPD. HPD Dispatch 713-884-3131.

Crime Statistics
The latest crime statistics are posted on the web at: http://mycity.houstontx.gov/crime/ or spotcrime.com.

Citizens on Patrol
A COP certification/re-certification class was held on June 16 at Lazybrook Baptist Church. I am very happy to say that there were about 20 Lazybrook neighbors in attendance with familiar faces to re-certify and several new people that were attending for the first time. Thank you for all of the neighbors that made the meeting, I look forward to working with all of ya’ll in the future.

Lazybrook Email Network
We have over 370 neighbors signed up to receive email updates. If you are not currently receiving the email you can join by emailing: security@lazybrook.org
If you change your email address please drop me a line so I can make the change and keep the list current.

Security Tip for Neighbors
If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies.

Next time you come home for the night and you start to put your keys away, think of this: It’s a security alarm system that you probably already have and requires no installation. Test it. It will go off from most everywhere inside your house and will keep honking until your battery runs down or until you reset it with the button on the key fob chain. It works if you park in your driveway or garage.

If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break into your house, odds are the criminals won’t stick around. After a few seconds, all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won’t want that. And remember to carry your keys while walking to your car in a parking lot. The alarm can work the same way there.

Yard of the Month – June 2011

Yard of the Month

The June award for the yard of the month is the home of Marc and Melissa Cougle of 2110 Millwood. The Cougle’s bought their home in October 2009 and spent the better part of a year remodeling the house. During some of their slow periods of construction work, they began to work on their yard. They started with their back yard to get as early a start a possible with their palms trees anticipating many years to maturity. Their improvements has also included some significant work to their front and side yard.

They expanded the existing flower beds, added a flower bed into the front circle portion of their yard, relocated their rose garden and added several trees. Some of recently planted trees include a large magnolia, live oak, dawn redwood Leland cypress and corkscrew willow. Their expanded and newly planted beds include shrubs that were pre-existing such as wax leaf lugustrums and azaleas and they have added new planting such as African lilies, lily of the valley, blanket flowers, dianthus, flowering thyme, mums, giant canna, holly, forsythia, and juniper. They also created a patch for native Texas wildflowers to grow and flourish.

On their side yard, the Cougle’s have also added a “mini-orchard” with a large fruit and vegetable garden. Their orchard includes a nectarine, pomegranate, Anna apple, peach, keiffer pear, apricot, cherry and Melissa’s favorite, an Asian pear. The garden was recently built by Marc in February and includes raised beds and is surrounded by a small iron fence. It has fruits such as yellow watermelon, strawberries and blackberries as well as southern standards such as cucumbers, yellow, acorn and spaghetti squash, purple and mix green leaf lettuce, “chocolate”, orange, yellow, red and green bell peppers, jalapenos, yellow, orange pear, cherry and big boy tomatoes, eggplant, purple okra, yellow and red carrots, Easter egg radishes and potatoes.

They wish the weather this season had been kinder, but are happy to have made the progress in their yard over the past couple of years and look forward to many continued years of yard work in Lazybrook.

Citizens on Patrol Training

Events, Security

It is time to re-train/re-certify all of our neighborhood patrollers and train anyone wanting to join. We are having a class on Thursday June 16, 2011 at 6:00 PM at Lazybrook Baptist Church. Please spread the word to anyone that you think might be interested. I need to get a rough head count so please RSVP to Lazybrook.security@gmail.com or call me at 713-864-2823.

Everyone is welcome, no experience necessary, this is a great way to help insure the continued safety of our wonderful neighborhood.

Thank you for your continued support!
Matt Herring

Letter from the President

Letters from the President

Hello Neighbors! The March 2011 Lazybrook Civic Club meeting was well attended. Thank you all for showing up and participating. Your attendance is encouraging to our volunteers. I really enjoyed the 290 Hwy expansion discussions.

This is my first year to take on mail pick up duties at our PO box in Oak Forest. WOW – March and April was a busy month at the LCC PO Box due to the Membership Drive our Membership Chair, Janell Bryans, and our Block Captain Chair’s, Ilya Martinalbo, team of Block Captains organized. Thank you very much for your hard work and dedication to our club. If you have not sent in your dues, please consider paying to allow your Block Captain to attain 100% participation for their block and receive recognition for their hard work. The 1St Lady, Richard Cade, is still missing a few from our block and it is really hard to believe.

I want to say THANK YOU to David Long for 3+ years of service to our community as your Yard of the Month Chairperson. He is relocating and will be missed. Jim and Mary Gorab of the 2000 block of Millwood have graciously stepped up to fill his position. So another Thank You for the prompt reply to my EBlast requesting help. You can reach Jim at yard@lazybrook.org or (281) 881-4800.

We have a new “Around the Neighborhood” reporter for the newsletter. Please call or send your information to Julie Kleine jkleine@stewart.com (832) 971-4731 or drop a note to her address @ 1703 Tannehill.

Thank you to Melissa and Mark Cougle for taking on 5th Friday Social while RC and I were in Europe for a few weeks!

Best wishes to all, Shane Davis

Recycling Update

Recycling

You have asked me so many times when we will be getting the automated recycling with the rolling bin, like our trash containers. I spoke to Marilyn Leday, who has been the right hand of Ed Chin for many years. They are the ones at the city that we worked with when recycling started. She told me that the neighborhoods are chosen because they can be added with the greatest efficiency – either because they are next to another neighborhood that is receiving automated recycling or because it’s the right size to be added to a route, or some other circumstance really out of our hands. However, it is my belief that if we had a greater percentage of people recycling regularly, we would be in a better position to ask the city to consider us. Think about it, if we have more recycling and more households participating, we would be a more efficient neighborhood to add to the list.

Please, also, fold, cut up or in some way flatten your cardboard when you put it out. It’s really hard for those guys to deal with whole boxes – especially when there is stuff inside. Also, remember that if you need another green bin, you may call 311 and request one. And, if you need any info, I will be glad to do research if I don’t know the answer.

Also, you might watch out at HEB and at Lowe’s for “Houston Mulch” which is processed at Living Earth and comes from our tree waste here in Houston!! Let me know if you buy some – give me a report to put in the next article!