26 THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 



metal sides of the water tank, which of a surety can 

 supply them with no meaty nourishment; or glare 

 at each other from either side of a post of dressed 

 lumber, which is also lacking in nourishing qualities, 

 once in a while catching the" other fellow a smack 

 over the head, an assault returned with interest? 

 But all these winged things are mere heralds of the 

 gorgeous red and orange and amber gentlemen still 

 on their way to us, and are on a par with tentative 

 bulb fingers poking upward through the drab earth, 

 with nascent buds on bushes and such wee signs 

 and signatures of the uprising year. And just now 

 the amateur gardener who defied prophecy and 

 sowed his little patch of lettuce and radish in a 

 sunny corner may reap his modest harvest and 

 scoff at the wiseacres an' he will. For he sowed 

 outdoors in the Fall, rashly dispensing with cold 

 frames or other protection. 



The orchards too were cared for in the Fall — 

 deep plowed, and now have just been pruned and 

 harrowed, either already irrigated or about to be 

 so. The previous Summer's abnormally heavy rains 

 have brought wild grass into a corner of the alfalfa 

 so I decide to fence instead of plowing and re- 

 seeding the marred acre, so that later on the cows 

 may be turned on it — cautiously, and for very brief 

 periods. Jerseys running at large in green alfalfa 

 are doomed to death, or escape but by a freak of 

 fate. Scarcely a ranchman in the Valley has failed 

 to lose purebred or graded cows from bloat, which, 

 by-the-bye, is not to be confounded with colic. If 

 Jerseys graze but a half hour on weedy or grassy 



