The rain is upon us.

Finally! 3 days in a row! Not hardcore rain, but light sprinkling in the afternoon and a little bit at night. Considering that the páramo of Mamá Cotacachi, where most of our drinking water is filtered through vegetation, was burned during the hardcore fire season, that kind of rain is just what we need. Doesn't cause erosion, but revives the grass roots up on the mountain again, which then retain the earth and make the feared erosion a little less likely. Hope.

For months, the garden was nothing. Just nothing growing. A few weeds here and there, but not enough to have Jesús, my gardener, come more than once a month. And that basically just to keep him in the loop.

Plagues spread, but I was able to get rid of them by cleaning up the onions regularly. Those are funny bugs - they pain your hand purple when you squeeze them. The pea pods dried up in the end, giving seeds for the next generation that I'm about to set into the earth these days.

Good thing about the drought was that all the weeds dried up quickly, without shooting more roots. I can throw those on the compost now, and hopefully they won't just re-hydrate and grow again. Which is usually the case in Ecuador, every plant has the ability of spontaneous self-reviving. Both good and bad.

Trying to not waste water, I only watered the garden once a week. Even though the soil is still bad. But the plants that I care about have already good, deep roots, so they're fine. And the rest I can quickly re-grow. If they don't do it spontaneously. The birds certainly loved the sprinklers. Every time I put them on, they came to take baths and play and have fun.

The purple basil had a blast, too. I wonder if it will ever grow seeds. We have another purple basil around, which I haven't taken out of the pot yet, because I wanted to wait for the raining season. So maybe we'll have purple basil all over the place, soon?

I had planted 5 Rocoto-Chili plants a month before the rains stopped, and they all made it through, already bringing some fruits. But it's noticeable that they don't appreciate the soil too much. Usually, they have a lot of fruits. These have one here, another there. Enough to dry up and make into powder. Really, really hot powder. Rocoto is among the hottest I've eaten. But hey, I've never been to Asia, so... Once I had Carolina Reaper. That was an experience...

As it starts, so it ends. I hope these will produce a lot of seeds and auto-propagate. They're among my favorites, edible, too, if I'm not mistaken, so Danny will love them for his dishes. And they make pretty in vases upon the tables, too. I will have to work on the soil now that the rains have started. The compost didn't do much during dry season, but now, it should turn into dirt within 2-3 months. And the grass will grow to keep providing. And Geovanny will bring me organic waste from other gardens to feed the compost. And I have so many seedlings to plant! And seeds! Finally...

I like raining season. A new start.