"Location, Location, Location"

I spent over three hours watering baby cottonwoods and golden willows today. Most are this or last year’s transplants, and the excessive heat has put a lot of stress on them. Normally, they’re somewhat easily watered out of the canal via irrigation pipe, but we’ve got the third cutting of hay down and drying, so I had to water with a water tank and hose out of the pickup. It’s awkward and time-consuming but necessary until it either rains or they grow a few year’s worth of roots—whichever comes first.

There are two lovely young cottonwoods that I’ve never had to irrigate because they live next to a little oasis that’s watered, I guess, from a bit of a spring. (See photo.) All of the bigger ones draw water from a bigger spring that runs year round or else groundwater that’s sourced from the big canal.

Realtors always say that a property derives most of its value from its address. In rainy years, location doesn’t mean as much to trees, but in drought, it can mean life or death--or less work for tree-keepers such as myself.

 



 

“[Most] blessed is the man who believes in, trusts in, and relies on the Lord, and whose hope and confidence the Lord is.

“For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters that spreads out its roots by the river; and it shall not see and fear when heat comes; but its leaf shall be green. It shall not be anxious and full of care in the year of drought, nor shall it cease yielding fruit.” --JEREMIAH 17:8