In the day it's so hot and dry you can feel the moisture sucked from your skin, breath, and body. A few times a year, there, it rains. Flash floods race through gullys, canyons and concrete channels fill overflowing with a leaping torrent, running to the sea across black top and drainage systems and it seems gone before you know it. But in the wild desert everything takes the short existence of water and goes crazy. Brown hillsides riot into color, purples, yellows, greens, and brilliant fuchsias spill from cacti blossoms and fast grasses.
Life floods in after the quick flood of water.
So I always equated water with care, life, and love. The only things that lived there were the things we gave water and care to. With all the sunshine in the region, Mom could grow anything, orchids, tomatoes in winter, sugar snap peas, traditional Asian fruits, pomegranates, persimmons, kumquats, and all kinds of herbs so long as she gave them the water that they needed. Like love, the water nourished, helped all thing not only live but grow and flower and fruit into something even more marvelous than before. Which is why I've always felt that it was appropriate that the rainy season, the growing season in the desert, was the time of advent.