The noise begins, my heart lurches and my summer harmony turns on its ear. It will take who knows how many solitary forest walks to sort this one out and hold on to my peace of mind. The humans are out in force to destroy my landscape.
We’ve lived in this house for 6 years now. and we have been lucky to have a large vacant property behind us. Large trees and brush have provided coverage and habitat for wildlife and from my backyard I watch the birds doing their thing, attracted by the berries of the mountain ash and the early flowering salmonberries. One day I walked over there to trim back a bramble bush that was overtaking our fence and inadvertently disturbed a family of deer taking a nap in the brush cover.
I always knew I was living on borrowed time. And borrowed landscape.
The Japanese have an expression for it. Shakkei, borrowed scenery. The art of incorporating what lies beyond, into the garden. In our case, our borrowed scenery was the trees and that is part of the source of the upset. Those trees seemed part of the garden view, even though a fence separates the properties.
Now the property has changed hands and the new owners are getting ready to start construction on what is no doubt their dream home. The bulldozers, backhoes and other heavy machinery have been on the lot cutting down the huge cedars that used to be part of what remains of the forest at the end of the road to make way for the new house. The mountain ash that backs the corner of our property and provides a stopping off point and food for hundreds of songbirds that I enjoy watching daily was yanked out of the ground by the machine in a matter of seconds and dumped on the heap. I cry.
Unlike many in this neighbourhood that completely clearcut the lots for new builds, due to a lack of imagination and a desire no doubt to build cheaper and easier, these people have left a few trees behind and for those crumbs I have to be grateful. A bit of my borrowed landscape remains. But the droning and clashing I listen to now from the machines foretells the noise and upset ahead for the summer to come. I fear for my garden refuge where I live outdoors all day and evening too in summertime. I’m not counting on that for this year.
It’s all far too much deja vu. Six years ago, the day we moved into this house after returning to Canada for good after our time in Asia, our new next door neighbour on the other side, a builder and developer, came over to meet us over the fence and informed us that that wonderful lush, park-like acre and a half property next door was about to be razed and scraped and clear cut to create a bare, level stretch of dirt to build 3 houses on. It was a hard time living through all that and it took a very long time to get over it, if indeed I ever have.
I think about what’s going on in this one little neighbourhood as a micro version of what’s happening everywhere, as humans continue to decimate the natural spaces to fuel the beast of supporting too many people on this planet. Some say that we (humans) are “destroying the planet” but that’s not really accurate. Planet Earth will eventually transform into something unrecognizable, as it has many times before. It’s the humans and other life species that will be long gone. We’re not destroying the planet, we’re destroying ourselves.
Meanwhile I daydream about living in a garden where I can neither see nor hear any neighbours. In these suburban gardens we delude ourselves into thinking we have privacy because of all the fences and hedges we put up between us. But we’re still plenty close enough to hear and see what’s on the other side of the fence. Much too close.
