March. 59 wonderful degrees. Birds (ok, crows). Actual shadows. And little tiny new leaves on some of the trees in the neighborhood’s central park. Little tiny new leaves on the shrubs that have been sticks for months (“Caitlyn, don’t step on the plants, they’re sleeping.” “Sleepy plants.” And then she drops her ball on them.). There’s even a crocus in bloom in the neighbor’s yard… After a long, dark, freezing winter, let’s hear it for Spring!
Category: Seasons
It’s not like I’m a Seattle native or anything, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I don’t think snow is generally all that common for Seattle. Something about being so close to the great atmospheric equalizer that is the Puget Sound. But we had our third or fourth snowfall of the winter last night, and today has been white and fluffy, clear and cold. Caitlyn and I went out, of course. Going out in fresh snow is always a challenge for me just because it looks so pretty when I’m still inside. It’s a big, white, …
I’ve, more or less recently, gotten interested in paying attention to the seasons. Not just in a “Gee it’s really stormy this afternoon” kind of way, but in a “Circle of Life” kind of way (with apologies for the Lion King reference). And part of paying attention to the seasons, for me, seems to be eating local, seasonal food. There are lots of reasons to eat locally and seasonally, not least of which is minimizing how far the food has to travel before it ends up in my kitchen. Yes, it’s possible to get strawberries in January, but they didn’t …
With the possible exception of the grass in the central park, I think we have all survived the Fourth. I have a complicated relationship with the holiday, even if we ignore the current discomforting foreign policy. Mostly, it’s about the fireworks. I enjoy the sparkles and the lights, but I’m finding that the older I get the more uncomfortable I am with the sounds and the smoke they cause. The big fireworks for large displays (the kind over the beach in Santa Barbara, or over any of the Seattle-area bodies of water) are fine, somehow. It’s the smaller explosives, the …
This is my first complete deciduous autumn (we arrived in the middle of fall, after the leaves had begun to turn, when we were in Germany). The hawthorn trees in our front yard are whispering secrets, chattering softly to each other as their leaves flutter down, patchwork on the lawn. The berries linger, outlining the limbs in a fierce red. Every few days, an army of small birds moves in, trilling to the dying year. I have a vague memory of a comic strip: something startles a tree, and it drops all of its leaves at once. My redwoods growing …
While grocery shopping yesterday, I finally read the signs by the Hallmark display: “Christmas, Thursday, December 25th.” That means this winter holiday is less than a week away. Driving home, I noticed the hibiscus along the road, saucer-sized blooms in red, pink, orange and yellow. Is it any wonder I’m not in a Christmas-shopping mood? For years, I’ve listened to (and given) assorted rants about the increasing commercialism of Christmas. Somewhere, I probably still have a holiday decoration emblazoned with “Jesus is the Reason for the Season,” an ironic and problematic statement. Nowhere has that been more obvious than here. …