water

"...all of us are dependent on civilization, which itself is dependent on the draw-down of even short-term renewable varieties of the earth's capital stock, such as soils and forests."_______________________________________ "some thirty percent of all surface water is being drawn to irrigate land to produce our food...corn typically needs about 24 inches of water, either precipiation or applied, during the growing season..." - wes jackson________________________________________________ "there is no such thing as a post-agricultural society" timothy weiskel __________________________________________________________ for the second evening in a row ( and for the foreseeable future ) i went out to campus to water...it rained well saturday night but then the weather turned hot and windy...tailor made to exacerbate transpiration in both the maize and teosinte and impact the tubers ( potatoes and jerusalem artichokes )...the perennials are more deeply rooted and will suffer less but may yet need some irrigation...the drought may have been temporarily relieved but we are still down about 50% on precipitation over the last few months and rain is not a major part of the near-term forecast...so i will be practicing human intervention to keep things green and growing...a second acorn squash has popped up ( top photo )...they both are inter-cropped with the asparagus and so will have natural trellises to vine on...like the sunflowers, runner beans, and squash in my back yard...the next three photos are of members of the zea family...northern tepehuan teosinte, hopi blue maize, and zea diploperennis respectively...and the last photo is the perennial garden project at about 4:45 this evening...everything humans do seems to be extractive in some respect...try as i might to allow natural processes to run the garden i still have to poke my nose and and fiddle with the ecology ( if it's not too arrogant to call it that ) of the garden...in the present case adding an artificial source of water( namely a garden hose ) to short circuit dry weather...if everything works out this fall will see a significant change of direction in the gardens ( campus and home ) that may take some of the arrogance out of the "ecology" nomenclature...a move towards a more co-operative group of perennials requiring less of my help than the grasses seem to need ( maize is utterly dependent on humans to reproduce and corn is in a multitude of food products... a symbiosis if ever there was one )...until then i will be a fixture in the garden.