lamblikeawolf

I'm really skeptical of this guy's answers, although he does admit his expertise is in cold climates and not warm ones.

"Just grow a big tree" isn't an answer for people who live in apartments or people who would like to reduce their a/c costs and environmental harm before 50 years have passed for the tree to grow. It's not an answer for people in houses built by tract builders (Lennar homes, for example) whose plots are so small you could practically reach through your bathroom window into your neighbor's bathroom to borrow some TP. And as you already pointed out - hurricanes and damage from large trees are of great concern.

As someone who lives in an apartment, what is the next best option, since I do not control the landscaping decisions of the complex?

Hello! I was in Girl Scouts all through high school myself, but it's been about 10 years since then.

When I was a scout, my troop leader had to get EXTREMELY creative to allow all of us to have the same meeting time, as we had a mixed age troop (about a 4 year span from youngest to oldest) - something that was decidedly frowned upon by our Neighborhood Council. She would do things like create a separate troop for a couple of years until we were all within the the same level rank again.

I was also fairly envious of my brother's boy scout experience, as they encouraged this mixed-age grouping and RELIED on it for the older boys teaching skills to the younger boys. Many of their activities also seemed to foster a sense of community, and the troop endured before and beyond the time-span my brother attended - something that was entirely impossible within my Girl Scout troop. As such, even though I was grateful for the group of girls I was with and everything my troop leader did for us, I had wished I could have been a boy scout instead. I wanted the same sense of community, and access to previous, successful leaders who had accomplished silver and gold awards before. I wanted to be able to have a wider selection of activities/badges than what the other girls wanted to do sometimes as well. (After we hit highschool, they much preferred not doing anything outside anymore, for example.)

My question is this: Has this policy changed at all? Are mixed-age troops more available? Has anything changed regarding making troops more enduring than just the small-ish set of girls that attends them, so that it builds a sense of community and has older girls teaching younger girls, like Boy Scouts has?