Empty, con't.

Alejna said she didn't realize that any part of Oregon was desert. Before I met my husband and moved to Oregon in '96, I didn't know it contained desert, either. (As a teen I daydreamed about moving to either New Zealand or Oregon, thinking them equal, climatically speaking.)

But here, look at this precipitation map of Oregon from nationalatlas.gov. Bend straddles the Deschutes River (on the border between the green & the orange), roughly mid-way between Washington and California. Dry, dry, dry. You can see why we have just two local CSAs, and why I'm thrilled and kind of mystified that mine begins providing vegetables in mid-May.

Bend is the most heavily-populated town in all that orange bit. By a lot. We have 80,000 residents.

P.S. My friend and fellow Bendite SMJ did a great write-up of the Nature of Words event, the one I mentioned last week — an especially incredible event in context of that map below.