One of the hardest things with a place such as Esperanza is stepping back and seeing what has been accomplished.  In the ten years that I, and even more so my parents, have been actively working on the property a great deal has been done…and yet.  It always seems that the harder one works, the more there is to be done.  The curse of a perfectionist, I suppose?*  Inevitably, I see every ill plant, every chipped bit of paint…

It doesn’t help that the weather has the Goldilocks Syndrome and in addition that dry Spring weather always sets me on edge; but I think the main part of it is that when one sees a location every day, it becomes extremely hard to see either positive or negative change.  Which is where a photographic record comes in handy.  Unfortunately, although tellingly, we have almost no photos of the property during the 1980’s and 1990’s.**  I keep reminding myself, when working on a project, to take ‘before’ pictures….I never do.  It becomes easy to second guess one’s observations: either you didn’t realize it was there/wasn’t there because you didn’t know to look for it, or it is there/isn’t there because you did/didn’t do something….and you can’t prove it either way.

The human mind seems peculiarly good at erasing information which has no immediate emotional import, and that is very frustrating for long term analysis. 

*Less Sisyphus and more Pwyll chasing Rhiannon.

**It isn’t just that they aren’t digitized…they Aren’t there.