MASTERS OF NOTHING

We humans like to believe that we have supremacy in this world. What a joke. We may be able to tame Mother Nature here and there, for short periods of time, but the minute we relax or turn our backs for even a second, she just goes right back to her old shenanigans.

Take our driveway, for instance. About a year after we bought this place, we paved the part that climbs straight up-hill. The remaining section - a fork that branches off in front of the house and leads to the guest room parking area - was left graveled. Once Lex moved away and was no longer driving on it daily, it made up its mind to revert back to native grasses and salt cedar shrubs. I knew we were in trouble the day John started to turn onto it, but had to hesitate because he could no longer see clearly where the edges fell off into ditches. He went out with his weed-whacker later, and spent an entire weekend attacking the grasses, but I do believe that by the time he reached the end, they were already creeping up behind him. What it really needs is to be re-graded and topped up with fresh gravel, but that would take a wad of cash that we just don't have right now, and will have to get in line with the landscaping plans, water catchment system, garage enclosure, and everything else.

In a way, it reminds me of the compound where we lived in Indonesia. It was absolutely gorgeous, with olympic-sized pool, golf course, club house, school, and streets full of neat little houses with tidy lawns. It was the Club Med version of a master-planned community, with palm trees everywhere. After the unrest broke out, and the last of the expatriates were sent home, their section of the compound was left sitting idle. Now, if you look it up on Google Earth, you can see it quickly being swallowed up by the surrounding jungle. Soon, it will be impossible to tell that we were ever even there.

P.S. Many thanks to bigbuckaroo.com for the image above.