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	The end of an orchard
	The end of an orchard By Alison van Diggelen As though you need reminding, this month was election month. It was good to hear some important issues debated. I must confess: I liked Pandori's promise to preserve the city and direct development within the city boundary, not places like Coyote Valley. Even though he's not a contender for mayor, I'm hoping his arguments against further sprawl won't go unheeded. Whether you're for expansion or infill, it's hard when development occurs right on your doorstep. Like many of us in Silicon Valley, there once was an orchard around the corner from my house: a rare piece of open space and a charming reminder of the former pastoral atmosphere of the valley in the days before the silicon chip. Last summer, the apricots glistened like auburn jewels on the laden green branches. It was tempting to tiptoe in there and taste the fruit. But one day in late summer, I drove past and my heart stopped: a seven-foot high chain-link fence had sprung up around the whole area, enclosing the four old ranch homes and the orchard. It was as though time had been frozen within the fence. A mailbox sat precariously on a lopsided post, gaping with its flap thrown open, as though surprised by the suddenness of captivity. Empty trashcans stood in a neat row of yellow, green and black. A wooden step lay askew on a front porch, rotten with age. Much of the guttering was loose. Now this overdue maintenance wouldn’t matter. The houses would be mown down in a few short minutes. The houses would yield to metal, their debris carried off, their existence erased. But the trees. The trees. It was harder to accept that they had served their purpose in life and now it was over. Their days were numbered. I speculated as to how they would remove them. Would they saw off the trees at the stump then come through with a giant plough and churn up the roots and soil? Or would they use a giant extractor device to pull out each tree, roots and all like rotten teeth? How deep are the roots of these faithful trees and how easily will they relinquish the rich soil that has fed them for decades? Would I hear the tearing and cracking from my house? Every time I drove past with the kids, I held my breath a little, anticipating with dread the day a gap would appear in the chain link fence, not to let the captives escape (if only the trees could sprout feet and take off to a safer spot), but to let in the destruction crew. I tried not to pass my worries on to the children. It seems so easy to erase the past in Silicon Valley. Time is on fast-forward with shorter and shorter product cycles, closer target dates, faster chips and little time for putting down deep roots. In Silicon Valley nostalgia is replaced by “prostalgia”: a sentimental attachment to things that don’t yet exist”. Pretty soon a dozen or so tightly packed executive homes will replace the tumble down ranch homes and the fifty or so apricot trees. There will be asphalt and concrete where trees stood. Of course there will be greenery, tiny well-sprinkled lawns and manicured landscaping, complete with ubiquitous oleander and agapanthus. Soon it will be hard to conjure up the picture of how it was. The history of this little corner of Silicon Valley will be obliterated, like the vanishing website of a failed dot-com. It’s remarkable how theory and experience can be so disparate. At college, I studied the economics of land use: how market forces can efficiently allocate the “appropriate” use between competing land uses. It all seemed perfectly logical. Yet I now sit with my family around me and pick holes in these clever theories. The returns were measured in monetary terms so the inherent pleasure my family and neighbors received from the trees was not part of the equation. Nor was the balance they provided to the suburban scene: a swathe of green within the beige and terracotta, nature within the manmade development, simple beauty within the bland. The value to the community is not quantifiable, can’t be captured by property rights, so it doesn’t count. That apricot harvest was bountiful but not bountiful enough in Silicon Valley terms. The rubbing out of this orchard is as inevitable as the gradual shortening of the daylight as we move from summer languor to autumn frenzy. It’s necessary if we want to preserve our greenbelt and avoid LA-type sprawl. I know that we can’t alter the tide of development anymore than we can the meanderings of the NASDAQ. I have to resign myself to the fact that this summer’s plentiful apricot harvest was the last. Yet it doesn’t stop my mourning it. About the author: Alison van Diggelen is founder of siliconmom. She welcomes your comments and story ideas. © siliconmom
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