Garden in the rain

WATER is truly the staff of life. How well did we know it during the El Niño weather phenomenon that we went through from the end of last year to just about last month until the first rains. Slowly, the rainy season has come back to us, though in some provinces, it's not coming back fast enough.

The effect on agriculture was massive losses of crops. The countryside landscape turned brown, and green became a minority color. Members of my household got news that the animals in the provinces were lean and hungry, the rivers had receded to low levels never seen before, and everything was having a hard time growing.