May 10, 2011

Mother's Day Hike with my Mum

For Mother's Day me and my mum went for a walk in Okenhocking Preserve, a nature reserve in Southeast Pennsylvania
The 180 acre park has a mixture of grassland, woods and water. The park is deceiving as it is right off of a busy highway and looks a lot smaller than it actually is.

We saw tadpoles, ducks with ducklings, vultures, red-winged blackbirds, barn swallows, gold finches. The park was created due to the building up of the area. I hate when areas get built up unnecessarily: there is a shopping center going in nearby that is right next to a shopping center that they can never keep businesses in.


It is cheaper for contractors to build  new structures than it is to fix old ones. Unfortunately what you end up with is a lot of dilapidated, abandoned structures. 
 

Even knocking down buildings and building new ones in their place has become wasteful. It has always killed me to watch a buildings get knocked down and see all of the materials piled in a dumpster, even when perfectly reusable. It is cheaper and less effort for people to buy new products than to sift through old ones. I feel that this is such a waste of the Earth's resources. I love seeing recycled structures in history. Many structures in ancient Egypt were dismantled after a pharaoh's reign and reused to make other structures.


Up north, I have seen little shops that sell antique fixtures from old houses but I've never seen recycled stone or wood around here. I was very excited to read about a man in Texas who builds affordable homes for the homeless out of recycled materials. While it is nice that he offers these homes to homeless people, I realize that giving a homeless person a home is treating the symptoms but not the disease. I do hope that this becomes popular among homeowners.


If you would like to read more about his project:

3 comments:

  1. I hate all the shopping centers, too. thanks for the pics of tadpoles I haven't seen them in years. Looks like you had a great day with your mom.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Jodi, we did. I like tadpoles, they're bizarre.

    Thanks Jess, We did. The weather has been so nice lately.

    ReplyDelete

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