Things have been so busy lately at work and on the homestead i forgot to write about last month’s rain. We got two good storms. One dropped 1.5 inches of rain and the second one brought 2 inches. It was not enough to start the river flowing again. From what i understand it needs to rain upstream for that to happen, but it was enough to get the little green blades of grass to seed and peek out of the dust and dead grass on the ground. It is nice to see something green for a change. It was getting depressing to look at brown, tan, and gray without a hint of green in sight. I was starting to feel like i was existing in some kind of movie where everything had become a desert and i expected men in patchwork welded metal vehicles to come over the next hill covered in grease and wearing goggles, shorts, and some kind of arm bands, ready to rob me for resources.
Anyways, when it did rain i wished it would never stop. I begged God to flood us like in the bible. I wasnt exactly prepared to deal with the aftermath of that but i figured we’d have less of a hard time figuring it out than we would figuring drinking water from thin air with the water table so historically low, the wells running dry, and the trees dying. Some of my cedars died this year. I thought they were invincible but the younger ones died…roots not deep enough i guess. I just knew we needed water to survive and i also knew nothing short of a biblical flood could get us back to a normal water level at this point after 4 years of drought. It did not rain for 40 days and 40 nights. It rained a bit on two separate days last month and gave us a good soaking at least. I’ll take what i can get. I was happy to have it.
I grew up in the desert. After a rain it was like you describe…grass peeking out of the dust.
After a rain, the desert would come to life for a time before returning to its hidden state.