Landscaping

I've been doing landscaping for the last two days with my buddy Milo. The project is at a house in the East Bay (Alamo), in a gated community with other mansions and well-manicured lawns.

Working outside is great. Learning about plants and drip irrigation is great. Hanging out with Milo is great and the pay is excellent- his client is generous and it is far more money than I would expect. However, I feel what we are doing is slightly ridiculous.

This landscaping is purely atheistic. The flowers, shrubs, trees and lawns are there just to look good. You can't eat them, you can't use them, but they make the house look pretty. In the process thousands of gallons of water and labor are used to maintain it and keep it green. It's ironic because the hillsides behind the community are just as beautiful and don't require anything.

In my opinion, it’s wasteful to spend a hundred thousand dollars on something that just looks good. That kind of money can buy homes, and medicine, and college education. It would be different if vegetables and fruit trees were eating the water and enjoying the labor, but they aren't. It's just a small army of us working to subjugate nature into small pretty boxes and terraces to impress the neighbors.

I feel conflicted. One hand, I really enjoy it. On the other, I feel it's one of the most useless things I have ever done.