Proof of God

That's what I thought when I realized what I was looking at: a miracle; proof of God; higher consciousness.

I was watering Shari's garden early yesterday morning, Wednesday, marveling at the varied vegetation in her small truck garden. Exhilarated, I got into a project I'd been postponing for weeks, planting small octopus agave shoots in dirt and lining up their pots between a grape vine and the loquat. I looked across the driveway towards the neighbor's and admired an ocotillo covered with fresh green leaves.

We had heavy rainfall on Sunday. The ground was still damp and the air humid. I just thought it normal that the ocotillo would be bearing leaves.

Then I realized it was the bare root ocotillo Shari and I had planted three years ago. All of a sudden, it had become magnificent.

It had never really "leafed". For years the plant had been mostly just a clump of sticks in the ground which I would water often enough with the hope it would bear leaves and flower. Last year it had a few leaves, only a few.

There's a large ocotillo in the middle of the circle that is the dead end, roundabout of San Simeon Drive. No one waters it. It bears leaves most of the year and flowers in early spring like clockwork. How tough can it be for my well nursed ocotillo to get established?

Now every possible location for a leaf is occupied. It is covered in leaves.

Sunday's monsoon downpour was the occasion. That downpour itself was a miracle; proof of a higher consciousness.

The rain got heavier and heavier as I carried an umbrella and surveyed out little acre of the Sonoran Desert. Water flowed everywhere. Desert frogs woke up from their torpor and were croaking. (We found two in the pool the next morning.) The driveway flooded and water poured into Coat Hanger Valley. For the first time I witnessed water flowing in our little gully.

I should have taken snapshots during the rain, but it was really wet. (Maybe I should get an underwater camera.) You will have to make do with these snaps of the ocotillo as evidence of Sunday's downpour and the miracle of water in the Sonoran Desert.