(no subject)

[which_chick]

The issue of the land between the road and the lake continues to irritate me. A lot. I truly do not like the way it looks. I do not think that what has been done constitutes an improvement. They do whatever they like. They cut things down. They mow. They lop branches. They clear brush. They kill snakes. They build pathways and docks. They want it all to look like a damn golf course.

*sigh* It's very depressing. When I was a kid, I liked where I lived. Now, I look at it and all I can see is the golf course factor.

In other news, Meatly had her baby (filly, black with some white) and the Ungrateful Bastard plays with string and will purr if placed on my lap and petted. He/she has figured out the litter box and is no longer cowering in a corner.

Comments

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

Yay! Go U.G.!

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

The problem is that most people do not want to live in a well-balanced ecosystem - they're out to carve themselves a yard. They don't want a meadow, they want a lawn. They don't want to vacation in a howling wilderness, they're expecting a resort. There *are* people who look for pristine nature, but they tend not to settle for the much-abused-and-used Pennsylvania version, but rather something with a great deal more Romantic cachet, like Taos or Jackson's Hole. [Which, incidentally, are ever so much more delicate and water-starved than the robust, well-greened, much-abused woodlots of unromantic Pennsylvania]

Personally speaking, I don't particularly enjoy frolicking about in pristine lakeside meadows & thickets, because I know people who've gotten nasty diseases from tick bites. Lyme's Disease sucks, and I prefer to gambol along a well-cleared semi-urban sidewalk thankyouverymuch.

[wynnsfolly.livejournal.com]

congrats on the new filly! looking forward to the pictures.

Howling wilderness

[ardvaark99999.livejournal.com]

I think it would be pretty difficult to characterize the lake as "howling wilderness." An additional problem is that the areas cleared and gentrified are generally for "looking at" rather than "frolicking." Were people to gambol about in the cleared areas, I think it would be, IMHO, less irritating. As it is, the areas are largely viewed from the insides of homes whilst people are en route from their sofas and their satellite tv to the fridge and back. Also while getting in and out of cars.

I note for the record that elder members of the clan are offenders in the form of "trees with grass" to an extent as well. In my view of the world, there is nothing more beautiful than a shoreline covered in elderberry bushes and other native species with buzzing bees, chirping and croaking frogs, lepidotera, and odonata. Underneath the bushes and in the water, I enjoy the rushes, cat tails, submerged logs, crayfish, clams, bass, bluegills, and crappies.

At moments like this, I often feel the urge to break out in song:

Oh give me a home where lepidoptera roam
Where the deer and the marmots can play!
Where seldom is heard an ATV jerk
And the skies are not altogether too cloudy at least a significant proportion of the time!

Home, Home in the Howling Wilderness!
Where the deer and the marmots can play!
Where seldom is heard an ATV jerk
And the skies are not altogether too cloudy at least a significant proportion of the time!

Ah. I feel better now. Oh, for the days of my halcyon youth in the unspoilt, bucolic world of Pennsylvania's Eden, where, even today, burning trash in a 55 gallon steel drum is a constitutional right.

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

I am picturing you frolicking, and smiling.

Spouse and I would prefer a woodland meadow, ticks and all, for frolicking, gamboling, and looking at.

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

There's some evidence (http://eab.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/5) that lends itself to the explanation that we prefer things like lawns over things like Pennsylvanian thickets because we're savanna-selected, and the openness of a lawn triggers deep-seated desires in our brain. I don't usually put much stock in evolutionary psychology nonsense, but I can kinda buy this one, for whatever reason.

(P.S., it's Jackson Hole, although the town is actually just called Jackson. The way we know if you're from out of town is if you come around asking for directions to Jackson Hole.)