One Tree Orchard Sustainable Community

“Makes Ben Hur look like an Epic!”
-tag line from ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’

I have a habit of turning small jobs into large jobs. In the case of deciding how to proceed with the subdivision of the One Tree Orchard I think I can safely say I have turned a huge job into an enormity. Early on I thought this would be a very straight forward process. Have some surveyors draw some pictures. Get a couple of okays from this person and that. Dig up some trees. Throw in a couple of roads. Build some houses. Sell em up eight at a time. Done.

Ha ha ha ha ha! Ya right. The illusion that this would be bureaucratically simple disappeared quickly. The illusions I was under concerning the design faded more slowly. In my travels I have seen a good many subdivisions go up. Some good, some bad. I have lived in some really nice looking houses out west that I would consider ‘disposable’. These places where made as cheaply as possible with little thought into what might help these homes last even a lifetime. Equally odd is the way that the land is laid out. All trees are typically cleared, land flattened and after the home is built a couple of non native trees are planted. These trees are more prone to disease and ill health since they are not suitable to the climate. The cleared land is of course a huge yard now to mow. (I just finished mowing my lawn for the first time this year. I can’t figure out why we mow our lawns, or at least why we have such huge lawn area. Can anyone tell me?)