an auspicious beginning

our daughter is home for her spring semester of college. her boyfriend is also staying with us. he’s a native californian. it is always interesting to see your home through the eyes of someone experiencing it for the first time. he has been asking innocent, but insightful questions like “why don’t you have any big trees?”. i explained that by california standards our trees may appear unremarkable, but by northern standards we have quite large trees (noting the many 100 year old oaks in our woods). and then explained how harsh winter tended to limit the growth in the north. he has also observed how often our conversations and plans revolved around the weather: what’s the forecast tomorrow? what does the weekend look like? is it going to freeze tonight, can i keep the ham in the garage? is it going to be too windy to kayak tomorrow? when is the rain expected? was that lightening? frost is forecast, should we cover the plants?  you get the idea. for a californian from the central valley, where the weather is predictably sunny year round, it seems surprising. weather here is a primary consideration, not an afterthought. right now, our woods are still bare and monochrome with long sight-lines. there are buds but nothing has leafed out yet. i keep telling him that as soon as we get a few days of warm weather, and some rain, we will no longer be able to see into the woods. the vegetation will be too dense too see more than a few meters. he is disbelieving at the moment, but he’ll see. we will watch the woods fill up with green, like a slow motion movie, in this era when all time seems to have slowed.

collection of early spring buds