It’s amazing what a little bit of rain will do. Not just the spit of heavy fog, but real rain. This unexpected visitor hung around for less than an hour Thursday night in drought-parched Northern California, but boy, what a difference! Our garden perked right up, as this pot of portulacas can attest.

The garden has been hanging in there on life support: container plants watered with warm-up water from sinks and showers, drip irrigation stretched a day or two longer between waterings. Nothing much has actually died of thirst–it just looks like Hell, somewhere on the continuum between bedraggled and fried (except for the thriving grasses, succulents, grevillea, and oleander, which were clearly meant for Hell’s Climate Zones 1-3).

I had thought the portulacas were doing pretty well with water stinginess–until they burst into radiant bloom after their bonus drink. That’s when it hit me how often we keep plugging along on not-quite-enough, thinking all is fine.

I myself could use an extra few sips–of sleep, of fiction reading, of fun–to go from doing just fine to thriving. How about you–what little extra would make a big difference in your life?.