Rain! Once again, desert rain revived my spirit and helped me to see life around me rebounding. 
Two Saturdays ago, spatters on my windshield both to and from the Marana Community Garden had me giddy with laughing and clapping in the car. The following Monday, patters and puddles and crisp clean-ness brought joy to our whole family in the backyard.
Harsh summer and fall
Like so many things 2020, this fall has been unpredictable in terms of weather, school, work, and health. I am thankful that aside from a few physical concerns and with the help of many precautions, our family’s health has remained strong. Keeping track of two public school districts’ dates, formats, and rules have occupied most of my brain cells and wear the family’s emotions thin on a good day. The lacking monsoon storms and sustained heat wave, though, left me hanging as a gardener multiple times. When I am responsible for several gardens to sustain educational programs, plus dependent on gardening to soothe my own soul, the discouragement has been a heavy weight.
Plants rebound
The mist flower (don’t quote me on the ID) made buds, then blooms. Bizarrely, when I have come to expect the unexpected, they were on cue for blooming in November! What else thumbed their little plant noses at the “wrong” weather in Fall 2020? My potted tomatoes resumed setting fruit in October, requiring only less-than-100-degree days. The peppers followed last week. 
Did you catch the container gardening video I recorded with a few lanky specimens in May? With some TLC, my salvia in the storage box made a few flowers during the summer. Now, they are unabashedly bright. 
Nearby, a bed of penstemon are perky and promising to make it through the winter – stalks of pink flowers expected in Spring 2021. 
In my school garden, an abandoned Russian lavender reduced to grey twigs produced new leaves after I discovered and watered it one hot afternoon. Lantana in an irrigation-less bed rebounded when I gave it a soak and some encouraging words. Did it know that I needed encouragement as well?
Classes inspire
Cheerful people and cheer-giving flowers, combined with finally cool temperatures and a cloud-laced sunset – the Fall Flowers Make & Take class in October was a high point of 2020. Getting closer to the goal of gardening as a tool for connecting people and place – the new Garden Together class convening two months so far has helped me breathe as an educator. I am deeply thankful for these baby steps of resuming in-person events, amidst our world’s fight against COVID-19 and our many personal struggles with maintaining physical and mental health in its wake. Within one morning on that spattery Saturday:
- A young gardener learned how to push a shovel into the soil and to follow a dripline to add seeds.
- Three generations of gardeners became curious about native bluebells, poppies, and lupines.
- I learned that lettuce has a good rap in the Community Garden beds.
- I heard out-of-the-box ideas such as using carrot leaves in a pinch for pesto.
- The blustery wind and sheltering barn cooperated in teaching about seasons and adaptations.
Rocks and dirt
On our property, the slope downhill from our house and uphill from our neighbor’s house has been eroding for years. 
I needed rocks, and this fall I needed them all the more. As a school garden coordinator, rocks have contributed motivation and teamwork 3 years running. Kids moving rocks because they want to, collaborating to help plants and structures with durable and visible results? A rock pile is one of my favorite tools in my teaching tool belt. At my school, I now work alone in the garden and teach only online. Could my family, and our desert willow tree, and our neighbor’s house, benefit from rocks at home instead?
The short answer was “yes”. My arms are pleasantly sore from lifting. I needed that exercise sorely. My two boys cheered on dump truck day.
Now, Kid 1 and Kid 2 have adopted an imaginative side project of excavating (read: eroding) more soil than they are shoring up. 
Tim and I have worked through several disagreements on materials and methods to produce beautiful progress on a shared end goal. Rocks did help get us all outside this fall. Mid-October’s decreased temperatures and November’s rain-softened soil cooperated. Rocks and dirt revive.
Writing from rain
Whew! Forgive the outpouring of stories after a drought of writing since July. All of the above reasons have lifted my mood and motivation both personally and for work. Especially the rain – to finally condense ideas into words and words into writing. What has helped lift you or your family out of a low day or season or year, even if just for a bit? Is a planting or landscaping project percolating that you could use some direction or advice on? As we all hunker down for health, I still welcome e-mails, blog comments, and photos of your backyard puzzles or bright spots. Take care.