In the days before it rained, as the moisture evaporated from the soil and I stood at my kitchen window watching the landscape grow to look more and more like a prairie – tawny and tan – I thought, of course, of the farmers. They wear drought on their faces, carry it in their voices, broadcast it to all the world in the empty fields that should have long been planted.

I thought, too, of all the people I know for whom working in the yard – which is what we in the South call gardening – is a particular joy, for whom damp dirt under their fingernails is evidence of a day well-lived, for whom the sound of a lawn mower and the smell of just-cut grass is magic. These folks, too, feel a specific ache when the clouds drift over unemptied.

I am not much of a gardener myself, though I have tried – Lord, have I tried! Every so often I get the urge to give Sandhill what one might call a swipe of lipstick, but my efforts have been successful only about 50 percent of the time. I get discouraged at the impertinence of weeds and tend to forget to water. I think I planted five hydrangeas before I got one to live and I have yet to get a camellia to survive. I am like the music lover who can't carry a tune.

However, a 50 percent success rate and whatever may have been passed along genetically from Grandmama Anderson – whose yard resembled a botanical garden in its bounty of native plants and who was one of the most centered and peaceful people I have ever known – is enough for this incurable optimist to keep trying and, as the dry days continued and the only yard work I could do was pick up the sticks that had once been branches and limbs on the trees in my backyard, I allowed myself to fantasize about what I might do if we ever got some water.

And then it rained! Two inches on a beautifully gray day and that much more a few days later. In a flash of insight, it occurred to me at that while there had not been enough rain to replenish the water table or even make the fields amenable to seed, there had been enough to make it a little easier for me to pull some weeds.

I started with the dandelion that had grown to at least three feet tall with thorns as sharp as a syringe. The shovel went into the dirt not exactly with ease, but with less resistance than I would have received just a few days earlier. I made a circle of curved divots and repeated the process three more times, each round a little deeper, the dirt yielding a little more with each thrust. When the taproot released with a most satisfying pop, I stood back, leaned on the handle of the shovel and smiled.

I found three more overgrown dandelions, performed the same surgical incisions and decided that was enough for one afternoon. Not much actual work, but adequate satisfaction.

It has been over a week and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the dandelion. A weed, a thorny weed, a thorny weed with no redeeming qualities as far as I can tell. A weed that managed to not just survive in a drought, but to thrive. A weed that has a lot in common, I think, with human behaviors like anger and pride and impatience, selfishness and prejudice and greed. Behaviors whose roots will give way only when the surrounding soil has been loosened by deep intention.

I need to get back outside with the shovel. There are still weeds and they grow fast.