Friday, May 11, 2007

landscape design

Peleg and I have started a new home project. We've met with a guy, a "chorus brother" of mine, who works as a landscape designer to help us do some work both on our patio and on the slope leading down to our house from the street above. On the patio we're going to put in a fountain with some plantings around. And we're going to pull out a whole row of iceberg roses, which are beautiful but a little delicate for our style. In the front we're going to fill in a lot of bare patches on the slope, we're going to create a fake stream down one side that will end in a pool and a real fountain at the level of the house, and we're going to take up a little lawn that neither of us really like and that has been hard to maintain because of the dogs. We're going to replace the lawn with some pavers separated by ground cover, with the fountain in the middle. that's the plan anyway.

Human beings are the animal more than any other that changes the environmnet to suit us, rather than accepting it as it is. Peleg and I talked to the designer about things like our desire for modern looks, and bright colors, and both of us having lots of fire in our personalities that we want to cool down with the water elements. The very idea that I ought to be surrounded by a landscape that relfects my taste rather than letting it reflect it's own taste is remarkable. Being at home in the evironmnet for humans often means changing the environmnet rather than changing ourselves.

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