A couple of weeks ago, I awoke to a strange noise. It sounded like water, but not quite the same as my neighbors’ pump. Was it one of the sprinklers going haywire? It wasn’t Wednesday, the only day we’re now permitted to water in our town. Would I have to put in yet another call to our HOA’s gardener as we try to get it right between water conservation compliance and landscape life support?

Then I noticed the sound wasn’t localized. It was a low drumming everywhere. Could it be…? Of course not! Then again . . .

I rushed outside, exultant. Yes it was! Rain! Splotches darkened the patio, fell on the parched plants. It vanished in a minute, more mirage than reality (except for the photographic evidence).

This rain won’t make any difference whatsoever in our historic mega drought. It won’t even tamp down the dust or matter a jot to the ravaging wildfires consuming California. In a way, it’s a cruel tease.

Yet that distinctive smell, the first sharp inhale that mellows into lingering fecundity!

A whiff of hope.

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Shrinkrapped subscribers may have noticed a recent mysterious post titled “Test,” with no content or images. Like the aforementioned rain, we might call this a mirage post. No, I am not experimenting with avant-garde blogging that makes Haiku look like a wordy genre. Rather, Shrinkrapped (or possibly my brain) has been broken for more than two weeks (when I first wrote something short and sweet about the elusive rain). The mystery blog was Bluehost’s tech support trying to diagnose the problem. The problem is mostly still there, but working on it! Still needing a whiff of hope, now more than ever, and I bet you are, too! So here you go, in an actual, work-around post when rain and hope—and apparently Shrinkrapped’s brains and blogs—are in short supply!