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Show 10 Just as mysteriously frogs appeared in the pool. Their chorus added hoarse music at evening. As an early teen-ager I was fascinated by the first pair apparently mating. When I startled them they swam off briskly, the male clinging to his hold on the female. Somebody told me that frogs do not actually have intercourse in the way most animals do, that intimate association is sufficient. But the intimacy I observed seemed close enough for copulation. Time has telescoped some memories. Because I was away considerable periods at school and a couple of summers working, I did not see all of the labor my parents devoted to the new garden and little orchard. But as soon as the tamarix hedge afforded shelter from the wind, progress appeared rapid. With plenty of water for the limited area under irrigation, rows of currant and gooseberry bushes throve. Mulberry and other small-fruit trees spread their branches. Carrots, radishes, lettuce, canteloupes and watermelons grew well in the sandy loam. There, sheltered by the thick dark green windbreak with water gurgling and chuckling as it flowed from the reservoir outlet, with varied garden crops prospering, Father could feel he had proved something about Nada. I'd be unjust not indicate that by this time, a farming district had developed in South Milford near the north end of the Escalante. Another district irrigated with electrically driven pumps was progressing at the south end of the valley, between Beryl and Enterprise, where a broad finger of the plain reached out toward sheltering mountains. |