ahh springtime

Yes... I know it isn't spring time many places. And yes, I know that what passes for weather in Santa Barbra is pretty much perpetual spring. It took me a couple of years before I could figure out that there actually are seasons here, even though the differences are very, very subtle.


When spring comes, many flowering trees go into bloom and many of them are fragrant. The airs smells of flowers everywhere. We have a few pittosporum trees on the church campus that go into bloom in spring and are flat out amazing. They are bout 150 yards or so from my office but all I have to do is stick my head out the door to be intoxicated by them. Even cooler than that, as you would expect, they attract bees by the thousands. They are alive with them. Last year I discovered that if you stand under the trees in the morning and remain quiet, the trees actually buzz from the bees flitting from flower to flower, gathering pollen.

It is an amazing experience...

Another Rainy Day

We don't get lot of rain in Santa Barbara, CA. And the temperature doesn't change that much. Indeed, the first year I lived here I wondered why the news stations had weather people. I joked that they could come and tape one report and show it every day and still be as accurate as any other weathercasters in the nation - "Fog in the morning that will burn off by 10:30, then sunny with a high about 70." I did learn that the fog isn't usually year round, there is a slight variation in the temperature from season to season, and we do get rain occasionally.

This year has been particularly rainy... and today it is rainy and cold (at least cold for here). We've had a couple of rainy days in a row and the natives are complaining about being depressed (they don't have a clue as to what seasonal affective disorder really is). I have to admit, that the weather here turns you into a weather wimp very quickly and I feel these few cloudy days too.

I also see the results. Just a little water and everything comes to life. The mountains are green. Mustard flowers cover the hillsides in bright yellow. Other flowers will follow soon.

All of this had me thinking about a poem Cheryl read in a funeral service the other day that essentially said that without grief, one can never know the real beauty of life. Without rain, there are no flowers...