More irrelevant updates on the home landscaping projects… when we bought our house in 1997, landscaping was a process of adding plants (as there was almost nothing growing here except for a few trees)… 8 years later we are in the process of taking out as much of the desert plants we put in… have gotten out of control.
Single prickly pear pads stuck in the ground spread in a complex more than 4 feet wide and 3 feet high… other cactus of unknown identification spreads itself laterally where ever its sections fall and hit the ground. Small cute flowering cassia mushroom to debris shedding monsters. Anyhow, Saturday was clearing out a bunch of this as well as cutting down 3 palm trees 4-12 feet high, pulling out overgrown shrubs, a sort of landscape feng shui. Cutting the palm trees is interesting- a new chain on the chain saw slices nicely, but all the fibrous materials continually clog it. But boy, there is nothing like the feeling of power in your hands when that thing rrrrrrrips… Anyhow, by mid-day, we had the bed of the pick-up piled well above the cab, so it was off to the dump.
I’d never been to a landfill until maybe 3 years ago, and it is an experience I recommend for anyone who lives ion modern society, kids too. Otherwise, we tend to think that once tossed in the garbage, hauled off by strangers, this by product of our culture disappears. But hauling it your self to the landfill clearly illustrates that there is an impact of all this, and there is a whole complex process for moving the dump off points, covering with dirt, bull dozing, manitoring, etc. The amount of “stuff” we all generate is rather shameful… and to even just see it, smell it, see the ravens poking around, is well, frankly illustrative.
There is some sort of technology metaphor here, but I am too tired to concoct it. Meanwhile, the 20 ton pile of sand is down to about 11 or 12, and maybe in a few days we can claim back our parking spot.
So take an opportunity and see where your crap goes. Who’s land is it on? Who lives near it? Who works there? Do we all have a part in the big piles?
