You Can't Go Home Again

While in New Mexico, we drove around on Saturday and saw some of the old places I remembered. Nothing, was as I remembered though. The city has changed so much and grown so big that I hardly recognized any single part of it. That included my old house. We drove by to see it because when I had moved away I knew that a sub division was being built behind it. Now before I show and tell what it currently looks like, let me explain what it used to look like.
We had a one acre lot on the edge of a mesa that overlooked Albuquerque. The night lights were so beautiful and we had an unobscured view for most of the valley from our backyard. Nothing was landscaped in our backyard, but it looked cool because it was filled with desert plants. Our front yard had about twenty pine trees along one side, which had been live Christmas trees of years past from the previous owners. We had a line of Joshua trees along the street which we always joked were there to prevent a drunk driver from going through our front door. We had a grass lawn, which is rare in New Mexico, so it struggled but was at least green. To the side of the house was a rock garden that needed some attention but at least was better than bare dirt.
Now, the house looks awful! They built some weird fence that doesn't really enclose the front yard and is an awkward height. The front yard is all dirt now, and they removed all the pine trees except one. They also removed every other Joshua tree so it looks bare. They changed the door to some southwestern pine thing, but it looks like it is boarded up in contrast to the dark wood siding. They also put a metal roof on it, which is the wrong color. The most tragic part though is that the view is completely obscured by the subdivision. You can't see any of the city. All you see is the back of various houses. It is truly sad to me to see the state of my old house, but at the same time I feel relieved that we weren't there when it happened.