Re: CULT: Rainfall

Maybe some of you can imagine the shock for one who grew up not too far from Char Randall where .008 inches of rain makes the news to come to middle Tennessee in 1982.  The week we arrived at Sewanee--an hour west of Chattanooga on a westward projection of the Cumberland Plateau--it rained.  About four inches came down in a matter of a couple hours.

I stood at the apartment door staring in stunned disbelief.  Those huge raindrops floated gently to the ground.  In Idaho, they would have hit like bullets, dropping from some thousands of feet instead of forming right before my eyes.

Water about four inches deep stood on a SLOPING lawn in front of the house during that storm.

That was as much water as we would have gotten in the "semi-arid" western Idaho in half a year.

The other shock was how LITTLE the trees were.  In the irrigated desert West with deep, wind drifted soils full of lava ash and river silts the same species would form trunks four feet across in a half century.  In TN and NC those species would be a fraction that size in several times the lifetimes. I still haven't gotten over the difference.

Just look at how lush Char's iris look in Iris-Photos.  'Tain't the rainfall that accounts for that growth.  It is brilliant high desert light, calcium rich soil, abundant and (ordinarily) reliable irrigation water and long hours of daylight.  She's on a parallel about as far north as NYC with the equivalent of four or five feet of artificial rain run down the rows between those beautiful clumps.  And no borers.

There are some other problems there, though.  Spring and Fall are each about two or three weeks long. (I exaggerate slightly).  The rest of it is either too cold or darned hot, but iris season is just about heaven.

Neil Mogensen   z 6b/7a Arden, near Asheville and Hendersonville, NC


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