Rain, At Last!

It hasn't rained in my city for over four months. The only thing that's fallen from the sky since June 7 is ash from the Station Fire, the largest in L.A. County's history. Los Angeles is under strict water rationing: municipal fountains are shut off, and we can only water our lawns on Mondays and Thursdays, and for no more than 10 minutes in any one spot.

Our gardens are coated with a layer of dust and debris.

Every August, it's spider season around here. The spiders have come and gone, but their cobwebs still cling to the branches.

It takes a good, strong rain to wash these puppies away:

My house's pot shelves, which should be a shiny, tidy white, are an abstract study in dust and kitty footprints:

My bamboo is suffering. Bamboo plants can withstand almost any blistering conditions, but they're wilting underneath their layer of grit:

Even my trash cans are dusty-dirty. (The lawn in the background is only green because we're trying to baby it along. But we're fighting a losing battle and it has dry, brown patches.)

And then, yesterday afternoon, something shifted on the wind:

Sprinkles! Sprinkles on my sprinkler cans! The rain was here at last!

By the evening, the rain was falling with blessed regularity. It continued through this morning. Now there's rainwater--sweet, clean rainwater--in my sprinkler cans.

What a difference one good rain makes! We went from this...

to this, in the space of 24 hours:

Thank you, beautiful rain!