Coto de RiverRock to save water: OC Register

According to the February 9, 2007 issue of the OC Register, the Coto de RiverRock look is to save water. Some of the arguments presented are:

"It was hard to irrigate properly and was dangerous for the gardeners, said Devin Sanders” a landscaping consultant with Mosaic Landscaping. Perhaps the association can pay for “roadwork training” for Mr. Sanders – say, by sending him to Tokyo to see how roadwork is performed, safely, in extremely tight places?

"It started as a landscape issue because the plants and grass were always dying there," said Lott Steffer, with Mosaic Landscaping – You mean, plants and grass need to be properly watered? The same consultants who advanced the notion of free $45,000.00 trees, and the Arizona look, more appropriate for the exotic gardens of Eze (France) than a bucolic Coto de Caza?

“Cars driven on Coto de Caza Drive were accidentally driving over the narrow medians, tearing up the grass and constantly breaking sprinklers”, said John Bernards, a member of the Landscape Committee Mmmm…let’s see, if cars are accidentally driving over the medians, is the problem the medians or the driver? – Perhaps this is what the Flight Rules published by the Australian Aviation Magazine meant when it stated “The propeller is just a big fan in front of the plane used to keep the pilot cool. When it stops, you can actually watch the pilot start sweating”!

“ The river rock used is native to the area. According to Sanders” - Seems like the initial settlers missed the mark and instead of calling the area a hunting preserve (Coto de Caza), should have called it Coto de Arizona, or at least Coto de Pesca (river fishing preserve).
"It will hold up better than plants to vehicles, Sanders said” - A profound statement indeed, rivaled only by the Flight Rules as published by the Australian Aviation Magazine: “In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminum going hundreds of miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose” - no wonder the Coto de Caza board of directors uses nothing but highly paid consultants – “Don’t try this at home, strictly for use by highly trained and highly paid professionals”!

This reminds us that during the first 2005-2006 Coto de Caza board meeting, a freshman director was willing to spend 10% of the budget on “irrigation remodeling”, or that Keystone Pacific failed to respond to repeated questions dealing with handling of Maxicom, the water conservation system, or repeated calls to repair leaky valves.

So, for a “lessons learned”, we need to fall back on the Australian Aviation Magazine Flight Rules one more time: “Learn from the mistakes of others. You won’t live long enough to make all of them yourself”