Yesterday I made a largely failed attempt to scout a new neighborhood for interesting stamps. I decided to go to the Flowerpot neighborhood, which I had heard of but never been to before, to the best of my recollection. It is a cluster of streets mostly named for flowers (hence the name) located at the western edge of East Lansing south of Kalamazoo. This little pocket of land is an area of town that has always been vague and fuzzy in my mental map of Lansing. I tend to think of Kalamazoo as leaving the east edge of Lansing, going through a sad little slice of Lansing Township near the freeway overpass, and then just cutting through a short, indistinct area of nothing before getting to MSU. The Flowerpot neighborhood is hidden away in that “short, indistinct area” which isn’t quite as “nothing” as my mental map makes it out to be.

I thought it would be interesting to see the neighborhood and perhaps find stamps that are contemporary to the development of the streets, but my trip wasn’t so lucky. First of all, nearly all the streets are marked as no parking at any time on both sides, so a quick stop on my way home from work turned into a parking hassle. Second, I quickly discovered that most of the streets have no sidewalks (and no curbs either, giving it a rural look). Only the two longest ones, Marigold and Narcissus, have sidewalks. Third, on a short walk as dusk started to settle in, I wasn’t able to find any interesting stamps. Most were Able or L & L stamps from the 90s and 2000s. I finally had to give up and shoot this BBRPCI stamp on the west side of Narcissus Drive, between Lilac Avenue and Daisy Lane, before I ran out of light.

Still, it was interesting to see the neighborhood, and it struck me that it seems like it is probably a great place to trick-or-treat. ELi (East Lansing Info, the East Lansing digital newspaper) has an interesting article on the history of the Flowerpot neighborhood. The article explained something that puzzled me on my visit, which is why all the streets were named for flowers except the theme-breaking “Hicks Drive.” It was originally the Hicks farm until the Hicks family began selling lots from it in the 1920s.