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Show Father's labor enabled some of the trees to thrive despite drought. Some died because customers or nighttime travelers drove into them, or livestock "barked" them. But a few grew surprisingly compared with most of our plantings. One tree in particular shot up bravely, perhaps because it stood between fairly good loam and a shallow swale bottomed with clay. There capillary action may have drawn moisture out of water-bearing gravel. Or possibly the roots themselves groped down to the gravel. Our first wet phase of the rainfall cycle passed into a dismal dry phase which yielded less than half the original annual 14 to 16 inches of rainfall and snow Father proudly recorded for the U.S. Weather Bureau. However, that tree grew with a blue-green beauty that seemed to say, "I'm here to stay. Now I'll repay you with shade for your countless buckets of water I drank in youth." o o As I've said, we sand-rats always felt relieved and grateful when rain fell. Picnics?-celebrations?-rain was cause for a celebration, not cancellation of one. We rejoiced with every tree and shrub and plant. Once during World War I, I luxuriated thus in a rare downpour. Happily I worked in that clay-bedded swale with a shovel,, throwing up a sketchy long low dam so that the run-off would make a pond to seep to roots of trees and shrubs we'd planted near that hollow. When I got well soaked and out of breath, I went into the house to take off my sopping coat and shoes and watch my shallow reservoir and ditches fill up. |