Have you ever tried to wrestle with Mother Nature?
I’m not talking about your war with crabgrass in a pristine planned community, I mean actually hacking at the prickly vines trying to strangle you while simultaneously scanning the ground for poisonous snakes that are camouflaged by the very thing you are trying to destroy? It’s like her back-up plan: if the human makes it past round one, program in a kill switch with hidden monsters.
I really had no concept of how difficult it would be to clear raw land. Correction, clear and maintain said clearing. Making the path isn’t so hard, shiny new tractors make it easy in fact, it’s what happens after one rain and the lapse of a week’s time. That beautifully manicured clearing you made is no where to be found beneath the poison ivy, cacti, and nearly fatal locus thorns.
It’s not just the menacing plant life that is seeking to retake what you thought you won, the animals are in on it too. Cute little bunnies find ways to get around your fence to eat your flourishing garden. You are assaulted by kamikaze grasshoppers with every step outside, and you find yourself growling as you watch them eat your rose bushes.
Even your cows betray you, after you hand delivered their hay in knee-high snow, by seeking greener pastures after one wind storm drops a branch on the fence.
Mother Nature does provide a constant show for your viewing pleasure though; painted lady caterpillars hatching into painted lady butterflies, the road runner that races down my drive each morning, a young deer playing tag with our dog Missy, and of course the wildflowers: like a bouquet from God himself.
Along with the pretty sights, there are the ugly sights too; daily sightings of snakes whipping across the road as you try your best to drive over them but always fail, the lonely tarantula meandering across the rocky terrain, and the raging war with wasps trying to make every square inch of your house their personal mud hut.
We only have a small parcel of this earth to tame, but in this cage fight with Mother Nature, we seem to be pulling a Rocky move by hanging on and hoping she gets tired.
Texas Tarantula
Wildflowers before Andy murdered them.
Humming Bird Clearwing Moth in my flower.
Baby birds that hatched on my porch, I think they are Barn Swallows.
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