It was a warm, cloudless evening and the sky had streaks of pink and orange over to the west. There was a person in front of the house to the left of his house, but after approimately two minutes the person went inside the house. Reginald sat on the front stoop.

The grass was mostly brown, but Reg saw green leaves scattered within it. The shrubs had increased amounts of green as well. Reg was pleased. He almost remembered planting the shrubs, and he knew that many of his vague dreamlike half-memories had really happened. That's what happened when he lost a memory and then regained it - it returned warped and dreamlike and surreal. It lost parts and replaced them with newly constructed parts. For instance, the shrub memory contained references to peanuts and bright white holes and blood coursing through veins... no... xylem. Xylem and phloem. One coursed up and the other coursed through.

Reginald knew his memories were distorted, but with great care, sometimes he could determine their origins. But it was slow going. He had to be patient.

He looked at the shrubs and thought of xylem and noticed it was not raining. He thought of rain. The shrubs and the grass needed more rain than the sky provided. Reginald knew that additional water came out of the garden hose, but he lso remembered that using the garden hose took a great deal of effort. Maybe he could rig the garden hose so that it provided water automatically, like the rain did when it rained. The rain would have been sufficient of only it happened more frequently. What Reg really wanted to do was rig the rain to rain more frequently... as needed. Without effort. Oh yes. Reg liked that idea.

He could tap the garden hose into the rain and use them together... ah, this was getting better. He thought he could use what rain there was, if only he found a better way of keeping it. Letting it collect into the ground was no good. The plants only found that useful for a day or two. No, what he needed was to put the rain somewhere and then use the garden hose to distribute it as needed, without effort. Yes, he would collect rain.

How to collect rain? Barrels collected rain. Trees collected rain. Roofs collected rain. He could place a barrel under a corner of the roof and let... no. Trees were a more intriguing way to collect rain. There were four saplings in the backyard, but Reginald doubted he could maintain proper control over them. They were beings, not objects. He needed to make a tree that was an object.

Reg thought about sculptures. He thought he'd thought about sculptures before, but couldn't quite remember the memories. But now he envisioned a tree that was a sculpture. It would have a great deal of surface area to catch the rain and it would funnel the rain into the barrel. The barrel could be inside the sculpture. He could install a pressure gauge to measure its water level, and it could have a garden hose attachment to distribute the water. It could have a filter to filtr out debris so the hose didn't become clogged. The filter would have to be accessible so he could clean it, but everything else could be built right in, as soon as he was sure it operated properly.

He would make a sculpture that resembled a tree. he would give it several tiers shaped like rings of branches so that he could get the base operational before he completed sculpting the parts. He could very easily obtain some scrap metal, and he could prime it and paint it so it wouldn't rust into the garden water.

Reginald was pleased. he would sculpt a sculpture nd it would be beautiful. He returned into the house to tell Zephyr, but Zephyr was still sleeping. Reginald turned the television off because it bothered him. He took a sheet of paper and a pencil and sketched out his metal tree. When Zephyr decided to wake up again, Reg would show Zephyr the sketch.