Green In The Fog, Or, Saturday Morning at 9:47am

It’s foggy here. My daphne with its lemon-sweet smell is in full flower.

Small catkins and tiny cones hang from the tall alder in the middle of our back lawn. They’re pale green; the branches red-brown; leaves just budding. This spring the pale pink and white hellebores nigh-on burgeon. And yes I say spring because in California although a frost may yet come, the season starts soon.

February, when it all begins in my neighborhood, is almost upon us. The roses are pruned, viburnum flowering, ferns unfurling a frond or two.

Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for a full 56 of my 66 years, I know this weather like my thigh bones. I have seen our summers get hotter and hotter. Days like today, the fog of my childhood low to the ground, I can almost feel the earth taking whatever chance it can to recover and be itself again.

Which resembles hope closely enough. I have not forgotten the violence.

To your days, my friends.