Nature, with rain and dew as its painting medium, used a rubber door-mat as a stencil on my back porch.
(The rubber door-mat had started crumbling and turning my feet black, which is why I removed it. Only to find a beautiful surprise waiting underneath! The rubber mat is now unobtrusively but usefully undergoing its final decomposition, as part of the mulch layer in one of my landscape beds.)
I’ve always been a fan of the patterns created by nature interacting with human-made stuff. I even like the black and green areas created by silt and algae on the concrete. It just adds to the beauty, as far as I’m concerned. I always did find great beauty in Roman ruins, mossy English rock walls, and things of that kind.
Not everyone likes such a “disorderly” look; some people think it looks messy — which is why things like pressure-washers and leaf-blowers have become such a dominant part of everyday life. But, if you’re a person who likes the more natural look or can at least learn to live with it, you can save yourself a whole lot of time and aggravation. When surfaces don’t need to be kept uniformly pin-neat, it saves a lot of labor, money, energy, and of course fossil fuels. And by reducing the use of the outdoor cleaning machinery that has become so ubiquitous, you are also contributing to a reduction in the noise level around you, making the outdoor environment more pleasant for you and your neighbors.
I look forward to observing the ongoing progress of nature’s artwork on my little concrete slab porch.
What nature-art have you noticed lately in your environment?