Reclamation

I remember seeing a special on public television about how quickly nature reclaims property abandoned by humans.

see photo attribution below

Flora and fauna alike are complicit in disseminating homes, palaces, amusement parks and just about any structure that was once the pride and joy of some human or other who's most likely residing on the celestial plane these days.

I thought about this the other day as I viewed my asphalt driveway. From the time we moved in, the forces of nature have conspired to break up the asphalt with weedy intruders and, most recently, ruthless groundhogs who dig tunnels beneath what used to be our garage floor.

When we were younger, Mr. Ginley would spend hours digging out the weeds from the cracks. The other day, he ordered me to acquire a weed whacker and have at them.

I pointed out that whacking the weeds would become a weekly activity, since only the tops are lopped off.

"Well, you could spend a couple of hours digging them out," he replied. Ya, um, no.

Instead, I tried pouring vinegar on the weedy intruders in an effort to kill them at the roots. We'll see how that works.

In the meantime, I stumbled on a book called Naturalia, featuring photographs by "Jonk" Jimenez. He traveled across Europe and took snaps of various places that have been reclaimed by Mother Nature. I'm going to see if his book is available at the library. (Yes, I'm a cheapskate, whatever.) Anyhow if you want to know more about the photographer, here's the Jonk Photography web page promoting his concept of reclamation, which has a slide show of some of his work.

I think the lesson in all of this is that our time here is marked, and in the end, everything reverts to its natural state. 

So, enjoy your home, make it work for you. And if you enjoy going head-to-head with weeds, have at it. But also, admit that ultimately the weeds are going to win. 

And maybe that's not really such a terrible thing after all. 

Public domain photo by Mark Ahsmann, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons