1. Down on the Corner
There’s a bank on the corner just down the street. It has a spacious lobby, lanes of drive-up tellers, a fancy building with tinted windows to resist the grueling heat of the summer. And its grounds are dying.
The grass and the bushes and the trees around it are dying at an alarming rate. They are dying and being cut down and dug up and carted off so that the destruction isn’t too obvious. But they can’t cart them off fast enough. Two weeks ago it was a Red Oak in front. Then a Live Oak on the side. Now it’s a Cedar Elm and the shrubbery lining the front.
This paragon of American culture. This solid institution. This bastion of western economics and pinnacle of western thought. This guiding light. This mechanism for growth and expansion and wealth…
Everything’s around it is dying.
2. Out by our Street
Step outside with me, won’t you?
Come with me and let me show you our Monterey Oak. While the trees fall at the bank down the street, look at this one. Look at the green leaves, at the new growth now that the temperatures have dropped. Look at the mulched landscape at at the base of the young trunk. And look at that soaker hose lying there in the bark and leaves.
Once a week is more than enough. It doesn’t take much time. It doesn’t cost that much.
It’s our little investment in the future. You’d think the bankers would know about that kind of thing. Evidently not.