This story is not the spooky kind of stranger than fiction, but the nice kind.
Once upon a time, far, far away. Actually in the 1880s in the city of San Diego, USA, a miracle occurred.
San Diego was built in a dry, near desert area. It received 300 mil. rainfall a year. Half of Melbourne's 600 mil., which in turn is half of Sydney's 1200 mil. Its vegetation was sparse and stunted. Its reason-for-being is a large deep-water bay.
The city thrived on trading ships and a naval base.
One day a housewife marched into the council chambers and asked for thirty acres. She told the council she would then give them one hundred trees per year and subsequently a beautiful park. The council thought she was crazy but she was persistent (obsessive) and she got her thirty acres.
She then went to the harbour every day and asked the sailors if they would bring her back seeds, seedlings or saplings in pots, from around the world. She must have been very persuasive because in a year's time she was swamped in potential trees. More than she could look after. Indomitable spirit that she was, she went door-knocking to ask other housewives if they would adopt a plant. It would be their own little tree that they could care for and when it was big and strong enough they could plant it in their own park. The idea caught on and women queued up for their very own little trees.
City Park thrived despite there being minimal available water until the first cross country aqueduct was built in 1924. Maybe the ladies bucketed their washing-up water to their park. Maybe God smiled on them with sufficient rain.
Today the park, renamed Balboa Park in honour of the explorer, has expanded to 100 acres and is an oasis of beauty in suburban San Diego that attracts coach loads of tourists. A testament to vision and determination.-obsession?
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