February 29












muck and splendor

I've gotten lazy about blogging lately. I think if I could write in the mornings it would be easier, because I always have words in my head on my walks to work. I sometimes manage to jot a few things down on my lunch breaks but that time is mainly consumed by the very necessary eating of my lunch, and I am a slow eater.

It is almost garden season here on the coast. Some people might be out puttering already, or wisely starting seedlings indoors. I'm content to revel in the spring flowers and cherry blossoms everywhere and let the soil dry out a little. The garden is very wet and mucky, and the muck is cold and wet. Yes, I can wait. But we have had the 2016 West Coast Seeds catalogue propped on our kitchen island for weeks, open to onions, juicy carrots, beans, bright perennials, bee and butterfly wildflower blends, asparagus and artichokes, and all sorts of salad greens.

So, the cherry blossoms! Since my mention of them around this time last year, their splendor faded in my mind as the months and seasons gave way to other things. There is perhaps no other season quite so spectacular in Victoria as when all the cherry tree-lined streets (much of downtown and seemingly entire neighborhoods as well) are decked out - nay, billowing, with small pink flowers. It's cheering, like a wholesome month-long valentines for the soul. Or something. In any case, they are undeniably delightful.


Time seems to spin by more quickly in these shortened days of winter. I always feel like I need a lot more sleep to balance the increased darkness. More time in the light, too, though that is hard to come by just now. The weather has changed. We had what felt like (and may well have been) weeks of cold clear days, when frost lay heavy until almost noon and goldenrose light painted the sides of buildings and even the sidewalks. Mornings were cold and clear and crystalline in that winter way, all streaks and puffs of pink clouds and golden light spilling over everything from far away. Now the weather has softened into rain, clouded pthalo and lilac sky lit up by the city at night. These dark winter evenings are perhaps best spent close to the stove, stirring, chopping, filling the baseboard cool of the house with warm fragrance. Last night the wind roared and threw itself at our small house. From the darkness of our bed in the morning hours I could still hear it howling in from the ocean and I knew then that it had blown all night, tossing and turning through my dreams.

these things

The wind, a roar that chased us up the hill through the trees. Crows spilled upwards like smoke from trees of umber fire. November, new moon, cold days and silver light. The ocean has been like pounded steel most days, greased nickel when the wind pummels it at the land. I don't really at all like walking home in the dark, and I don't like the dark mornings much either. What I do like is bearing witness to lazy golden sunrises and pink-flushed sunsets, with no special effort on my part to seek them out.

Yesterday, a long-overdue visit with a best friend. Steaming chai fragrant with honey and superfoods. Bowls of nourishing vegetables, cooked and fermented and coddled just so. Bright magenta beet grapefruit juice. Wanders along familiar but slowly changing streets. The park, which is always there, peacocks, ducks. Bare feet on the beach, cold rock carved out by the last ice age. Books and beautiful tea. Conversation and company.

One day last week I watched Jer pull into the driveway as I came down the path. Once inside the door, he gently steered me back outside and around the bend in the road, where we watched a cat-like barred owl hopping around in the dry leaves and softly flying to perch atop the fence. The next morning before it was quite light, and in the evening (5 pm counts as evening now, right?) as soon as the dusk had settled, the barred owl's who-cooks-for-you call rang across the still backyards.

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