I like history, so when I find an interesting name for a street, park, school, or building, I'll often do some research to find out who that something was named after.

Recently I was showing a property to a Client because it was surrounded by a Boys/Girls Club, Elementary School, and Middle School. Since they had two young children, age 4 and 6, they were planning to move in and stay for a few years. The name of one of the schools was Oak Valley Middle School:

Not only was there not a single oak on the property, but there wasn't a single oak anywhere in the valley, and even calling it a valley might be arguable. I couldn't even find any historical evidence that it was ever covered with oaks.

California has an indigenous oak tree, the California live oak, which could have been planted on and around the school. Instead, there were non-native pine trees and non-native sycamores, both of which require a significant amount of water to remain healthy in our desert environment.

What were they thinking? We don't have enough water as it is. In fact, we're regularly threatened with water rationing. The powers-that-be are encouraging us to save 20 gallons a day, so I've quit flushing the toilet after #1, take a shower only every other day, and don't drink water anymore; I've switched to Coke. Only kidding, only kidding!

I do wonder, though, who does this stuff because it's just too hard to make it up.