"There's less moisture in the air now, so the oil is intensely moisturizing," she said.
The water kept the moisture in, she said, while the soil "provided the ideal setting for these artifacts — not too acidic, not too corrosive".
In a roof garden, they would have gotten plenty of moisture from snow, she noted, but planted vertically, they didn't get nearly enough.
If your dog is eating a moisture-rich diet, she's getting some of her water needs met with each meal, so she may not drink as much from her water bowl.
The ideal conditions for such growth involve warmth, moisture, organic material and time, she said.
She can gather all the moisture in the atmosphere to melt stone into slurry; or she can concentrate air into almost solid columns, allowing her to fly.
"This is the kind of thing that, any other year, would wait until early fall, when the moisture came back into the air," she said.
"When you can move them, you know you've cooked off all the moisture and they will be browned," she said.
Nevertheless, at local scale HydroGeoSphere and MIKE SHE provide more detailed soil moisture predictions.
She still has to use old-fashioned methods like plastic wrap to conserve moisture in the skin of very premature babies, she said.
