Early Morning Musings

It is 4:23 am and apparently I am fully recharged. For the last several days I have not been feeling well (head cold) and I have been using every spare minute to recharge my excessively draining batteries. I must have clicked back into the land of the relatively healthy this morning around 3:30 am because I stopped sleeping and started thinking. I recently read some thoughts on poor people and their reactions to being poor. That, in combination with some David Wilcox lyrics that are incessently looping in my head, brought on these pre-dawn thoughts.

The following quote is from my uncle's blog.

"Truely poor people think they can't afford to be prepared, for storms or anything else in life. For some reason they are always unlucky. Temporarly broke people prepare for things. Eventually things go well for them."

While I agree with this basic premise, I think there is quite a bit that goes into making up our attitudes that we have very little control over. Which brings me to the Wilcox lyrics.

"All the roots grow deeper when it's dry."

I live in the desert and I know that isn't always true. Some of the plants here send hearty taproots deep into the ground searching out the water they know is down there. These are the plants that have been here for hundreds of years. They know only one thing - dig deep or die. They have learned to work within their ecosystem.

Other plants, the ones people have introduced to the area for our own benefit and amusement, haven't had the time to learn this lesson. All they know is that water is rare out here and the little rain we get barely has a chance to wet the surface dust before it disappears. These plants don't send out taproots. They send out millions of tiny roots just under the topsoil, hoping to soak up what little moisture comes their way before someone else does.

In a drought, the native plants are like an average Joe who's hit some hard times. Sure, things get tough, growth may be a bit stunted that year, but there is always that taproot to fall back on. The native plants have the education and the support of the environment around them to get them through. Eventually, the drought passes and life goes on.

Not so for the transplants. Without the knowledge of their counterparts or the support of their seemingly hostile environment, their elaborate system of surface roots find nothing to hold on to. They gradually (or not so gradually) wither up and waste away.

Although attitude can make a difference, the plants' real chances of survival come from their ability to understand and utilize their environment. What do we do with this information? I don't really know. I know if I plant a tomato here in Anza, I can keep it alive with plenty of attention - daily watering and nuturing. However, by doing so, I am not really helping the tomato adapt to desert life. I'm just making it dependant on me. If I go away for a week, it will still die. How to teach my tomato that it needs to take the risk of putting down a deep, deep taproot when all it sees is the daily battle for surface water? Since both my tomatoes died while I was away this summer, I am obviously still at a loss. However, I am not going to blame the tomatoes for failing at something they were never equipt to do.