In Southern California, sharp distinctions between indoors and outdoors and rural and urban have broken down. Our front and back gardens are intended to be rooms to function together with the rooms in the house. I frequently sit in the front garden and listen to radio music front [from?] the living room, and we frequently eat in the patio, using it like the dining area. Because of the large window doors, whenever we sit in the house, our vision is to the out-of-doors. So, too, the distinction between rural and urban is blurred. In the east, an urban area has little vegetation, except in set aside parks. Here in Southern California, the city and "Suburbs" are frequently as heavily vegetated as the rural areas in the East.
Perhaps the distinction between natural and artificial breaks down as well. In our garden, the "wild life" behaves as if it were domesticated. A bluejay flies into our garden, naturalizing our potted plants by perching on them, and dropping down to the dog's dish and taking away dog food. Somewhere, a bluejay family is eating dog food.
In Southern California, we have created a new ecology--an irrigation-nature, which by being totally man-made, as [is?] much as if we were a colony on the moon. Animals do not so much seek out analogues with "nature," as they simply, in a darwinian way, try out the new reality, within the limits of their sensory and breeding range, and survived. Adapted.
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