But what if a bountiful climate is a thing of the past?
"What a privilege it is to serve this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, magnificent country," he said, alluding to his sixty years in the Navy and in Washington.
The downpours also deluged what had looked like a bountiful rice crop, just before harvest.
The Manchester City Project may be on the verge of realising a bountiful harvest, but this part of the world has already seen what a rich benefactor can achieve, many years before.
This has a way of making what is actually bountiful feel slight, a late entry into the now tiresome competition to chart the cultural history of a single natural resource, be it saffron, nutmeg, salt or cod.
The only losers are the athletes who happen to catch the eye and wrath of N.C.A.A. investigators tipped off to players picking up what effectively amounts to crumbs from a bountiful table.
To the Editor: A more nutritious fund-raiser and one with a lesson plan would be to show kids how to plant a garden, nurture seedlings, reap a bountiful harvest and then sell what they have grown.
For while the Broadway season was a bountiful one in many ways - what's this, almost a dozen new musicals?
Forget what you learned about the first Thanksgiving being a celebration of a bountiful harvest, or an expression of gratitude to the Indians who helped the Pilgrims through those harsh first months in an unfamiliar land.
