Nature is Overrated

Thursday was "Earth Day" and we were supposed think about how wonderful nature is and how we should care for the planet. Nature does produce some marvelous stuff, but it has a real down side nobody ever wants to discuss: Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, boob-droop are ALL a part of nature.

My really big problem with nature is that a lot of it takes place out-of-doors. There goes your climate control right away. Whenever I am outdoors I am either sweating, freezing or both. I lasted one year in the Girl Scouts and the only camp out I ever went on had indoor plumbing. Having to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag was enough for me. I just didn't get it. The eating nasty, half-cooked breakfast with ashes in it from the open fire sealed my distaste forever. If you can get a "Grand Slam" at Denny's for $3.99 down the road, why the hell would you cook eggs over a fire?

Once a year I practice my own version of spring fever. I attempt to make peace with nature by emerging from my house into the front yard. I'm usually outside about ten minutes when I remember I try to avoid the yard as much as possible. This year was no exception. I got it into my head that Boston ferns would look lovely swinging gently in the Georgia breeze on our front porch (or should I say "veranda" since I am going with the Southern bliss imagery?), I went over to Lowe's and rounded-up a few. This led to my discovery that our hose has rotted over the winter and needed to be replaced. This required another trip to the store. I got the new hose, flipped back the cover on the self-rewinding hose holder (a thing of beauty indeed): Inside was a wasp industriously working on a wasp nest.

Yet another reason I don't like nature: You never can be sure with nature. Pull something out of the yard and there's a worm. Nature has no respect for the constructs of humanity, hence the damn wasp nest in my beloved self-rewinding hose holder. I sprayed the offending wasp and nest with wasp killer, it was a direct hit, but that damn thing wasn't going down without a fight. It came after me. I continued to shoot at it with the wasp killer, hoping it would head in the other direction. The wasp spray was the foamy kind and landed in big globs on the driveway. Finally, the wasp dropped out of the sky. I felt sort of bad about killing one of nature's creatures, but one has to do what one has to do. As I hosed the poison off of the driveway, I wonder how seriously I was damaging nature with my poisoned water run-off? Not only had I killed one of God's creatures and destroyed the home it was trying to build for it's family, I was polluting the water supply for generations to come.

All I was trying to do was hang a few Boston Ferns. Do you think the plastic pots they put those things in at the nursery have a greater negative impact on the environment; or is their toxic plasticity offset by the "plantness" of their contents? I considered this as I hosed the bird poop and pollen (two of nature's treats) off the front porch. Then I noticed the wrought iron plant holder had rusted over winter. Would spray painting it damage the environment more than throwing it out and getting a new one? Perhaps I should just bury it in the backyard. One of the trees seemed dead in the back yard. Should we have it removed and if so, what should we do with the remains? Would burning it just cause more air pollution?

Convinced I could single-handily destroy the entire planet, I went back inside the house where I could keep my damn carbon footprint under control. Nature, it's overrated.