Backyard Landscape

Oft photographed but always changing. The weather is moving steadily toward summer and we're both seized with the spring cleanup bug. We've made good progress on clearing leaves, pulling weeds and pruning or removing a lot of overgrown plants. I'm using the royal we as John has done most of it, but I've served in a consulting capacity, drifting around rubbing off new growth at the bottom of the lemon tree, culling the riotously blooming roses, and filling the house with vases of blowsy blooms.

John brought down a box of oranges from our tree which brought on memories of the fresh squeezed orange juice that accompanied my breakfast every day as I was growing up. We didn't have a tree but Mom would go to Prebbles, an outdoor produce market in Pasadena and pick up a box of oranges. I can still see my father counting six scoops of Yuban coffee into the electric percolater and squeezing orange halves on a little  orange squeezer, also electric. I don't think I appreciated that delicious juice as I was rushing around getting ready for school, but I know I have never liked the kind of orange juice that can be purchased in the market in a carton labeled 'fresh squeezed'.

I went to Pilates in the studio again today, still enjoying the feeling of normalcy such a simple thing occasions. As I look back on the past three months it seems almost as if everything came to a halt on February 21st and a new routine began. Then slowly, one by one, the old activities are being resumed...driving myself, grocery shopping, cooking dinner, working in the garden, walking to Spike's meadow and now back to Pilates. I certainly will never take any of those rather mundane things for granted .

I'm sitting looking out the window at an oak tree just on the other side of the fence that survived the fire and appears to have a nesting pair of  birds on one of its branches. We rarely see nesting birds because the trees that are left are very large and fairly dense with leaves. Further investigation will be necessary....

I love having an interesting view out the window no matter where I am in this house, but I miss the easy friendships with neighbors on our small block in Berkeley with houses close together, sidewalks and cars parked on the street rather than in a garage with an internal entrance to the house. When the kids were little we would congregate on somebody's front steps and chat while we watched the kids roaring up and down the sidewalk on various conveyances. We would see each other coming and going from our cars (and sometimes even streaking across the landing next door in a state of, shall we say, deshabille?) There was an unwritten code about that. Never make eye contact with your neighbor when they are inside their houses.

I'm sure all that has changed as the kids grew up, the older people passed away and our generation retired and moved on.