Nature Reclaims

"...the patient roots ground brick and concrete back into soil."
-SM Stirling, The Sky-Blue Wolves (New York, 2018), CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 116.

Tree roots grind buildings into soil, with metaphorical patience.

In Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," the Ixchulhi have built a half-mile high pyramid on the conquered Earth right where the time projector is. The time travelers, not yet knowing that the edifice is alien or how big it is, cannot emerge until the pyramid has started to decay:

"He wasn't worried at first. Man's works were so horribly impermanent; he thought with a sadness of the cities and civilizations he had seen rise and spend their little hour and sink back into the night and chaos of time."
-Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT CHAPTER THREE, p. 238.

But the edifice stands for twenty thousands years. When a house-sized stone block slips from its place half way up the pyramid, the projector emerges on the block in 25,296 A.D.

In 26,000, the pyramid has become a high, wooded hill.
In 28,000, men quarry it for stone.
In 30,000, the pyramid is gone and a small city has been built from it.

In The Sky-Blue Wolves, the trees have been deliberately planted among the ruins. Thus, in both cases, man as well as nature reclaims formerly built-on land as time passes.