If You Want Your Cactus, You Can Keep Your Cactus
Fall at last! This morning was the first fall morning here...just a few days shy of November ...that I thought about needing a jacket. I skipped the jacket, and jumped in the golf cart to buzz down to the barn to meet the farm crew and found I'd just sat in a wet golf cart seat. Yeah! Fall and its accompanying morning dew is here for the duration. Now until July, careful seat checking is a prerequisite. Forgetfulness gets you a wet butt. Just for fun, I checked the weather report in a Northwest community where I've always wanted to live...yep...32 degrees. It's really still beach weather here in northern San Diego, except in the very early morning. Which explains why we have a large and still growing population that our current water infrastructure cannot ever promise to accommodate consistently.
I don't think there is an easy answer, but the current Ostrich in the Mud Plan can't possibly end well. If water resources and population don't grow in tandem, one of two outcomes will occur at some point: either draconian third-world-like mandatory reductions in water availability must be mandated or population movement will become a reality. One of the first things I noticed as I child when I often traveled south of the border, was the lack of residential landscaping. That lack was a function of the cost of piped in water. Only the very wealthy "wasted" water on non edibles, and even then many didn't. I can remember that my reaction as a kid, was that I would never choose to live without greenery. Greenery soothes the soul. Even the smallest lawn with the tiniest fake hills and teeniest fake valleys gracing the smallest postage-stamp home sings to the senses. Without being forced to, I don't see the majority of us giving up our beautiful greenery. Especially lawns, which function as anchors for everything else. There's a reason that new communities' homeowner CCRs like Santaluz's have to mandate lawn-free landscaping. Why on earth would a whole community of custom home builders forsake the beauty of a lawn without being forced to? It's just this side of desolate to drive through the gate-guarded community. Lunar. A juxtaposition between upscale and the third world.
So okay, we can put our finger in the damn of our Water Infrastructure Problem by trying to mandate ourselves into loving lunar, which has become a politically correct position to proselytize, but I'm thinking there will always be those that choke on the Koolaide that Lunar is Lovely. It isn't. It's third world failed resource/population management.
If I have my 2nd grade history right....the final collapse of the ancient empire of the Anasazi Indians was caused by a catastrophic dry spell dubbed the Great Drought. They abandoned their easily protected, multi-generational mesa top stone homes, never to return. Hungry isn't the best time to look for greener pastures, but you can't blame the Anasazi; they had no idea that their population had outgrown the available water until failed crops, depleted food storage and actual starvation had proved without a doubt that the needed rains that had supported the population weren't returning and the climate had changed for good.
I don't think there is an easy answer, but the current Ostrich in the Mud Plan can't possibly end well. If water resources and population don't grow in tandem, one of two outcomes will occur at some point: either draconian third-world-like mandatory reductions in water availability must be mandated or population movement will become a reality. One of the first things I noticed as I child when I often traveled south of the border, was the lack of residential landscaping. That lack was a function of the cost of piped in water. Only the very wealthy "wasted" water on non edibles, and even then many didn't. I can remember that my reaction as a kid, was that I would never choose to live without greenery. Greenery soothes the soul. Even the smallest lawn with the tiniest fake hills and teeniest fake valleys gracing the smallest postage-stamp home sings to the senses. Without being forced to, I don't see the majority of us giving up our beautiful greenery. Especially lawns, which function as anchors for everything else. There's a reason that new communities' homeowner CCRs like Santaluz's have to mandate lawn-free landscaping. Why on earth would a whole community of custom home builders forsake the beauty of a lawn without being forced to? It's just this side of desolate to drive through the gate-guarded community. Lunar. A juxtaposition between upscale and the third world.
So okay, we can put our finger in the damn of our Water Infrastructure Problem by trying to mandate ourselves into loving lunar, which has become a politically correct position to proselytize, but I'm thinking there will always be those that choke on the Koolaide that Lunar is Lovely. It isn't. It's third world failed resource/population management.
If I have my 2nd grade history right....the final collapse of the ancient empire of the Anasazi Indians was caused by a catastrophic dry spell dubbed the Great Drought. They abandoned their easily protected, multi-generational mesa top stone homes, never to return. Hungry isn't the best time to look for greener pastures, but you can't blame the Anasazi; they had no idea that their population had outgrown the available water until failed crops, depleted food storage and actual starvation had proved without a doubt that the needed rains that had supported the population weren't returning and the climate had changed for good.
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