Now I know I am obsessing about this, and have posted it over at Lose the Noose as well. But see, this is what is going on next to my house. The builders clear cut the whole damn lot, and are busy working on a McMansion that will need to be landscaped to replace the trees that were ripped out.
Is it necessary to turn nature into a contrived patch of fertilized turf, surrounding a vinyl monolith?
As you honor the fallen this Veteran's Day, take pause and consider the path that brought us to Iraq. Our lifestyles are based on oil dependency, and our cities and towns are planned accordingly. Consider our greed, and our attitude about resources. Consider if the "American Dream" needs a reality check.
5 comments:
Don't even pretend to be repentent about cross posting this, Lily. Most Americans need to be beaten about the head with this reality check.
I've gone treehugger mad, is all.
I just think I am defensive about how emotional my reaction has been to this! You know when you see a fire burn down a home, and know that a family once lived there, kids once played there? True, its just a house. But this is how I feel when they bulldoze these places. Is it necessary to remove everything? Not a twig remains when they do this.
They ground up the boulders down the road to build the other "McMansion and displaced bear cubs.
They take dynamite and they blast through the rocks, and churn up all the brush in a huge chipper-turning everything in sight to mulch. And all they can say is how lucky I will be to have such beautiful homes nearby! Raises the damn values you know! But I'm sorry, these are not the only values we should care about! Good, I'll take my raised values and buy some acres somewhere then get a conservation easement so they can't do this.
It's not hard to understand why the area of the foundation has to be cleared, but what always strikes me as criminally stupid is the way entire LOTS will be cleared, only to be repopulated with lanscaping later, as you point out.
Last year, one of my neighbors cleared his entire lot, then planted grass throughout, and a row of evergreens on the perimeter. Looking at just his property, there's nothing to suggest it's out in the woods; it could just as easily be in suburban New Jersey or something. I mean, it looks alright if you're into that sort of thing, but it seems pretty silly to completely strip your property of all the natural features and replace them with such a contrived landscape. I don't get it at all.
Well on the surface, no I suppose it does not LOOK bad to do this. But underbrush and natural growth are important to nesting birds, and are part of the ecosystem, even dead trees. Now my property is landscaped and by my own admission, I do a fair amount of work on it. But the thing is that it changes the way water drains, erodes, and behaves when we clear land like that. Chemicals of course impact the food chain, and so on... I guess my point is that just because we live in a place does not mean we have to outright conquer it and control every square inch! Mindful moderation would go a long way.
We are conditioned to think it "looks better" and are aesthetically offended by what departs from suburban norms of beauty. Just as anorexic girls are touted as an ideal, so is a yard with plants that don't really belong there. Whenever you plant things that don't belong, trouble results, and the upkeep amounts to wasted time and wasted resources like water and fertilizers to force the issue.
I just think that spraying "roundup" around my kids' yard amounts to stupidity. Weeds won't destroy internal organs!!!
Understood completely.
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