And whatever he touched in that rich fortress of his soul sprang into golden life: as the years passed, the fruit trees—the peach, the plum, the cherry, the apple—grew great and bent beneath their clusters. His grapevines thickened into brawny ropes of brown and coiled down the high wire fences of his lot, and hung in a dense fabric, upon his trellises, roping his domain twice around. They climbed the porch end of the house and framed the upper windows in thick bowers. And the flowers grew in rioting glory in his yard—the velvet-leaved nasturtium slashed with a hundred tawny dyes, the rose, the snowball, the red cupped tulip, and the lily. The author uses sensory details in this excerpt to create images of

1. in recent lessons, you have been reading about some of the challenges and issues that the united states faces in both foreign and domestic affairs. review your notes from chapters 39–41 and make a list of these issues. make sure you review the looking to the future and charting future courses sheets from the divisions and new realities lessons. of all the challenges and issues that the united states faces, which do you believe is the most serious in terms of foreign affairs and which in terms of domestic affairs? choose one of each and write an essay that describes each issue and explains why you believe it is the most serious. there is no right or wrong answer—you will be graded, in part, on how well you make the argument that each issue you chose is the most serious. refer to the rubric and scoring instructions on the next page to see how your teacher will grade this assignment.