"Sure."
"Are they ever going to water it again? The tree?"
I said I didn't know. I said the Green was going to stay off until spring, at least, and that the district had told the association that a new irrigation meter and a backflow preventer for the Green would cost about eleven thousand dollars, and the board hadn't decided whether to spend it, and some people wanted to tear the bluegrass out and put in crushed rock and native grasses like ours, and leave it at that. Which would probably be the sensible thing to do. Which would probably mean the end of a red maple in that spot, sooner or later.
"But it's allowed," Pia said. "Watering a tree. By hand. Even in a drought. I looked it up. Under Stage Two you can hand-water trees and shrubs with a bucket or a hose with a shutoff nozzle any day of the week."
"That's true," I said.
"And it's not on the Green's meter if we do it. It's on ours."