Yay! Our little stream has returned, thanks to a sizeable downpour. Now we can relax at night to the sounds of burbling water, as well as wash dishes a few hundred feet closer to home. The rainy season isn’t really supposed to start until mid-May, but today we saw the second big storm in just a few days. The first brought hail, and today’s brought a staggering amount of rain: so much that we had to set out buckets inside our house to catch drips from the rainwater that was backing up over the nails holding down the tin roof. That much water also means that all the local springs are overloaded, making all available groundwater pretty dirty. But no worries- a bucket set under the eaves of the house catches enough water for a bath in just a few minutes.

This will probably put the garden into overdrive. Our potato plants are already shoulder-high, and we keep on piling dirt around them just like Farmer Betty told us. Emily pulled the first of the beets this afternoon, and they are MONSTERS the size of softballs. Then she made a tasty stew out of them. We also gave a few of our new Jalapeño peppers to Nas Palas, fulfilling one of my original gardening dreams.