Saturday, December 31, 2016

Changed Paradise

My parents-in-law’s corner of nature is not the same, at the close of 2016. For the first time in living memory, all the springs have dried up. The family’s big vegetable garden lies abandoned. Even herbs in the veld are scorched. Two great fires have ripped through the area, killing most of the trees. "It was as if someone poured petrol on them," said my mother-in-law. "Whoof! and they were gone!" The death of the trees has completely changed the plant life, too. OBSERVATION: I think of Roger Whittaker’s song: "Will the fire burn off the land, and the sea fill up with sand? Will the last word ever spoken be why?"

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