The End of Summer Has Come

The summer days peaked and climbed to their highest degrees yet.

With my right hand, I pull the curtain across the cheap metal rod and turn a hand-tied macrame loop around it to fix it in place. My eyes travel across the story of my garden stopping first at the pitiful Café Au Lait dahlia I did not cut back, weeping, drying, no longer moving from bud to bloom. Is its tuber rotting away under the too frequent watering the zinnias love so much? Has a gopher eaten its way across the tubal base, destroying its source of life? Its bright emerald green takes on a dullish hue. Moving to the left, I survey the healthy growth on the dahlias I cut back. These are still alive. These have not been eaten. The new leaves betray a deep pine vibrancy so surprising in these August days. As I look closer, the plants still stretching upward carry the same contrast, new growth reaching out and up amongst the old.

The Mulberry tree leaves are dry and dusty, but not so much as our van is now or will be after a few more days of harvest. The air itself is a little cloudy today, the sunset is a little more radiant.

As the activities wind down, the most passionate of my children shudder at the thought of missing the last practice, the last class, the last opportunity for summer fun. Even a canceled cabin trip fails to elicit disappointment in them to match my own because this means they can see friends one more time at the folklore practice at the church leading up to the festa days.

We attend a Portuguese parish.

We are not Portuguese by birth or family or heritage, yet by finding a home here we are somewhat, adopted Portuguese. Without awkwardness, my children join in the folklore. They sign up to lead games. I will be a chauffeur and experience the festa through my camera lens for the newspaper, which although technically a form of work, helps me to see and experience the event in a deeper way than I might otherwise do. It offers a place for me to set all my reflections.

Last year I began to learn about these traditions. This year I commit them to print. I have these hopes but time will tell.

Whatever the festa will mean culturally or spiritually, for us it marks the end of summer as Labor Day marks the end of summer for fashion and home decor magazines. The almonds will be harvested, the gardens change their tune. What began in abundance will wear out from tiredness. It dries out. It dies. And with some sweet relief, one day in autumn, the cool days return, only long after we gave up on summer and began to pretend we have more distinct seasons here in Central California.

This is a unique place and a beautiful place.

I pick up an old novel by John Steinbeck, the same edition I sold long ago, and poke through its pages, hating and loving it at the same time. The best of the moments is the understanding of the soil in California. There is life here, although quite different than anything else in the world. It is a unique place and a strange place.

In my newspaper writing, I celebrate the community and church activities as efforts that work to continue traditions and connect people. Tonight I met a man who knew me, from high school or church, he could not place me either. Slowly a picture of a young, scrawny high schooler with curly black hair sitting at a drum set came to mind, but only slowly. He moved here after leaving 14 years ago. I expressed my wonder as most people seem to be saying goodbye to this state. “Moving here from Orange County,” he said, “is kind of like moving out of California.”

How very true.

I lived in Minnesota for a time and I lived in Virginia for a time. There, summer gives way to a burst of firelight in the trees before dropping to the ground in the sleep of winter snow. Here we have late summer, that stretched into most of those months we call fall. Here, some of us long for winter and cold and sweaters, but we wait.

It’s the world where birds fly to in the winter. It’s the bread basket.

It’s home.

Previously published in the weekly column, “Here’s to the Good Life!” in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

What’s in bloom this month: March Edition

What does our garden look like this March? Blooms here and there with the promise of beauty and the lessons in patience.

Greenheart Orange

In the garden, Greenheart Orange Calendula grow happily since January. Its Irish orange disk-shaped bloom has a short life per bloom, spindly stems, but the determination to be part of the garden despite my lack of love for it. I pick from the plants sprung in late winter from the seeds of its predecessors. It readily self-seeds. The subtly rust-colored and cream-colored calendula surrounded by those brazen orange blooms are so much more my favorites to put on show.

Madame Butterfly Snapdragon

One snapdragon, left from last season grows in the corner of another flower bed. I kick myself for not starting those seeds in the fall, but I can be merciful to myself remembering my reasons: life and toddlers. These are not window box snapdragons. Rather they burst into bloom with three by six inches tall clusters of burgundy purple flower heads. When I cut as early as recommended, the higher, later little blooms lose their color. They impress me more as neglected plants in the garden.

Halloween Halo

A stray iris rose from its sheaves itself first. Halloween Halo appeared again and again as the startling early showy bloom of a spring that was supposed to be winter. Its white petals fringed with orange and an orange tongue at its center, offering pollen to bees and ornamentation to the eye, complement the warm tones of my living room and mantle.

Between the rain, fog then frost, my irises have black spot on many leaves. It remains to be seen what a year it will be. At least Halloween Halo gave us that gift of early spring. Hope comes with the return of longer days as the leaves multiple and grow. In the front of our house, a deep purple iris blooms repeatedly. It dislikes domesticity life and fades quickly in a vase.

We started seeds.

And half seedlings died in that late frost. My husband’s garden fared better as we prioritized space for his vegetables under the lamps in our potting shed/barn.

Leucojum Gravetye Giant

Leucojum, sometimes called snow-drops, pushed through the piles Mulberry leaf-based mulch. They still impress me as one of the loveliest bulb flowers I have ever seen. To my delight, they multiply each year. On delicate arching stems, a foot-long in length, white bells, like a fairy’s skirt dotted with green at the hem, emerge looking as gracefully in the garden as in the vase. Their stems drip toxic sap like daffodils making them less companionable in an arrangement without special preparations.

Narcissus Barrett Browning

Narcissus Barrett Browning bloomed with white outer petals and a feisty red-orange center. It came after the traditional yellow daffodil that reminds me of spring days watching the animated Alice in Wonderland. For a wedding-size bouquet, I added daffodils to a red amaryllis, greenheart orange calendula, the weedy fiddle neck, mint and boxwood.

Ranunculus comes next in orange or cream.

These were pitiful or non-existent last year. As I weeded in the fall, I discovered three thick clumps. Those, I divided into to no less than thirty plants. Even with my bud vases full in the house, I have plant envy fomented from Instagram as I see the remarkable ranunculus professionals farm florists send out into the world.

But no roses

Professional growers are also beginning to display some rose blooms, but mine are still in early growth. Two second-year plants and five new bare-root roses are doing wonderfully well. When we visit, I peer across the lawn at my mother’s roses bushes to see if her roses might be ahead of mine. They are not. We must wait with anticipation for those first blooms.

Patience, my child

It feels like that time may never come. But it will. The yarrow grows fluffier. More sprouts spring up. Acropolis Narcissus has nearly bloomed. The growing season is long, but with such short winters, we may suffer from more impatience because we never learned the skills to cope with the dormant season. I think of investing in a greenhouse, but where will we put it?

We tilled the soil around the sidewalk outside our house. I want to look out and see the flowers as I drum my fingers waiting for the next arithmetic answer from my 4^th grader. Leave the housework, the schoolwork, and the fieldwork behind.

Leave the flowers to me.

Perennial garden at the beginning of spring

Three Years on the Farm

We are a small-scale farm, very amateur operation, and learning as we go. Our primary lesson is patience. After that first lesson, we learn about flowers, animals, and the soil that sustains them both. This is where we stand, at the beginning of our third year, here on the farm.

When we moved here

wild geranium and sting nettle filled the yards to the brim. Chain-link fencing, irrigation pipe, and black widows occupied the barns. The walls of the workshop brimmed over with mold. Pesticides laid the field low. Yet, the house waited for us. This house, so well-known to the community, seemed ready for us and we were ready for it.

The roof needed replacing. The windows were falling shut. The driveway flooded, waters flowing up into the workshop, higher and higher.

Casey Music Service Music Studio and Lounge

Little by little, we mowed and tilled.

We planted a fruit grove towards the back of the field, imagining the day when all the produce we needed would be right here, and a day much later, when our lives are quieter and we have more than we need, able to bless others with that abundance, as others bless us now. Blossoms punctuate the fruit grove. I sent the children to make scientific observations on the differences between fruit trees and I wonder if we perhaps pruned the trees too hard this last winter.

I see the blackberries and raspberries coming back to life and remember we need to string additional wire to support them.

The chicken coop and our little flock of chickens came next, hauled over with my father’s tractor. The chicken yard expanded as these three years marched on, as did the flock. We replaced the feeder and nesting boxes with products from DuncansFarmStore on Etsy. What a difference it made. That plus the patience of waiting for chicks to age, we now collect an average of 10 eggs a day for the six eaters in the house.

In December, a friend offered me two lambs to test our budding interest in raising sheep. Sheep milk can be used for consumption, yogurt and cheese production, all products my children consume in bulk. Each morning I rose at 6:30 a.m. to mix their formula. My three eldest children went out in the wee hours to feed their lambs. The lambs grew, challenging our construction skills until they were ready for the wide-open world. My husband set up their pasture, or lamb yard, as we call it. Now their baaing drives him crazy whenever he is outdoors. They knew where their food comes from.

Inside the yard

the wild geranium and nettle made way for a perennial flower garden, a cut flower garden, a dahlia garden and a fairy garden. I am determined to let the fairy garden’s flowers bloom at their own pace and never cut them. This one shall be for the delight of our eyes. All the rest for my fingers to pick and arrange and share with the town through the little flower stand I began last year.

first year perennial garden for my cut flower farm

New rose bushes arrived this year, complementing the collection we inherited from past tenants. After the removal of two problematic trees, I must reassess the water need of the plants facing the road.

The interior of the home became ours quickly with coats of paints, art and antiques, a quick change in one bathroom from a bulky vanity to wall mount cast iron sink from Miss Potts Attic. The second bathroom had its remodel when we replaced our kitchen countertops. A new counter and new tiles make the room, preserving the old we can keep and replacing with new when called for.

It comes step by step.

We made mistakes in these past three years, but understand them as lessons rather than errors.

Better than all of it is the sight of my barefoot children, my son’s vitamin D levels, my two-year-old swinging herself as she sings, my daughter’s iris garden on the brink of blooming, my child’s treasure map, and the holes the bunch of them are digging to China. It is a golden childhood, and we are so grateful to give it to them.

We are but tenants ourselves.

If we steward our resources well, this house will live on past us, to receive the patter of little feet and nurture little souls.

Step by step, little by little, and with lots of patience.

When the Garden is Good

Gardening came with home-owning. Growing flowers came as therapy. A flower is a piece of art. A bouquet is a collection of art pieces, arranged to showcase the beauty of the feature star.

With our new home came new possibilities. It was difficult to keep the sprinklers running without their getting clogged. Perennial, drought-tolerant plants to fill large swathes of land, replaced wild geranium and nettle were called for. I planted lavender, Russian sage, salvia, chamomile, mint and dusty miller.

The ranunculus were on sale at Costco. They went in, along with irises that have gone with me from home to home, a sign (to me) of hope in bad times and generational love.

The roses bloomed. Years-old roses I had not worked for. In spring they came as a magnificent gift, creating a three-foot tall arrangement in my footed orange-art-glass vase.

Then I met Floret Flower Farm through Erin Benzakein’s first book “Cut Flower Garden.” Gardening became accessible. From therapy to hobby and even familial bonding as my husband grew the vegetables and I grew the flowers. Now my daughters are helping me harvest the greenery.

I arranged flowers for my home and posted photos on Instagram. Last summer, a woman from our parish reached out to me to order flowers. Orders trickled in. I sold potted paperwhite bulbs and sweet pea seeds at The Loreto Market in December.

Spring came again. Now there are more plants alongside the lavender and salvia than I can name. Another flower bed of dahlias, zinnias, snapdragons and strawflowers sprung up where once there was dust and weeds.

More orders. Bonus bouquets. And then, a flower stand.

Each day, I arrange a handful of pint-size jars of flowers, careful to select for color, shape and complementing features and set it out. I photograph, post, and hope people will come by for $10 jars bouquets. I hope they will ask questions. I hope they will place a special order.

“The money goes to pay for the hobby,” I tell my friends. But truly, there is something deeper at work when I handle, contemplate and arrange the flowers. I have written over the years about how gardening is a microcosm full of life lessons. I feel that even more now.

Because now, we have bugs and powdery mildew; and I lunged with a garden tool at a gopher who had just eaten the rhizome off of one of my new irises.

And my daughter received her First Holy Communion, a big deal in the life of a young Catholic girl as she goes to the Church dressed like a bride That day my younger son was hurting.

“Does it feel like a step back since he was doing so well?” a friend asks, with compassion in her eyes, in response to my tears.

“No,” I said.

Because somehow I could feel in my heart that gophers exist alongside the flower stand. The roses look mighty pretty, even as the gardener clips off damaged leaves and hopes the next flush of buds will be protected.

The weeding still has to be done.

It is hard to remember this when the going is good and I have just set out seven little floral arrangements on a Monday morning. Yet, when faced with it, if we can accept the bad along with the good, the rocks along the otherwise smooth path, the weeds along with the vegetables, without thinking that the garden is doomed, that this year is a failure, that success will crumble, then we have got something to hold on to.

Then we have got a garden.

Then we have got a family.

And those are the times, more than any other, that we can feel how good it is.

Previously published in the weekly column, “Here’s to the Good Life!” in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch.

Draw Back to the Garden

Motherhood is work.
And work is play
Until the demands of my duty
Fill the hours of the day

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off–then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Melville’s sea and my garden

My first flower order of the year came at the fresh and breezy beginning of May, after the first rush of rose blooms, before the dahlias, pincushions and zinnias start their takeover of my morning hours. The calendula is beginning to speak up. The snapdragons are showing promise. Here and there new flowers are whispering that they are ready for their first bloom. Some garden beds are a disappointment. Some feel more like an investment in the future.

“It will look amazing next spring!” I say, pointing to a bunch of transplant-shocked plants. I know I should transplant in the fall. I know it. But when the plants are healthy is just when I can see they are crowding each other and where its creeping roots might be severed to fill in the gaps of another bed.

With the first flower order complete, and with ten more bouquets besides to sell bound or The Loreto Market, an outdoor market we hosted outside our home. As the market progressed, my stand emptied out until the last bouquet sold.

After hours of clipping, cleaning, and arranging I thought how welcome a break would be. Let the bees have the blooms for a few days. Before two days passed, I was back in the garden, gushing over my third peony plant in bloom. Its scent wafted up my nostrils as I tied the arching stems to a stake.

“Motherhood is work,” a priest reminded me.

The simple words spoke volumes to my soul. Motherhood is work, and I do not need to make the other projects into work right now. I’m tempted to ambition, to dive deep into the next project, to go and go and go until I reach the boundary of what I can do, simply because I have the energy to do so. I have the energy, but no longer have the time.

The thing that was a fun hobby then becomes a strain. Other duties call my name: a five-year-old, a toddler, an emerging 6th grader, field and flower.

After balancing life and projects last week, I thought with satisfaction of letting the weeds go and leaving the blooms to the pollinators. But then a mystery flower was covered in frilly orange faces, the yarrow burst with sunshine, the bunny tails wiggled in the wind. I must collect them. They all move so beautifully together.

This hobby takes effort, but the effort is sweet. Its work balances my duties within the home. It draws me outside, into the wind, the sun and the dirt. I pause and contemplate. My senses spring to respond to the stimuli nearby. Pathways in my brain flicker with excitement as I draw relationships from color theory.

I cut, I clean, I arrange.

And my home is filled with flowers.

The woman who placed the special order listened to my gardening story, that story that begins in sadness and grief, but grew a garden. “You’ll always have this as the gift she left you, your love of gardening,” she said.

Many days of motherhood are filled with laughter and tears. To find the fruit of both, I go out to the garden.

Would that we all could find the hobby that energizes us, that balances us, that helps us find a central space around which we can pivot, flexing our muscles and growing in virtue is ways that pour over into all aspects of our life. This gift is not something only I can receive because of some privilege. It is available to everyone. And its path takes us through, not just the garden, but the good life.

Spring Gift Guide – Father’s Day Gift Guide

Join us May 1 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. for The Loreto Market

While you shop for yourself, your home, for Mother’s Day, check Father’s Day gifts off your shopping list after a visit to the Loreto Market. While many of our vendors feature lovely items with feminine appeal, we haven’t forgotten our fathers or the men among us. In this Year of St. Joseph, at the Loreto Market, you’re sure to find something for the father figure in your life.

Order a custom set of windchimes or music lesson package by Casey Music Service

Casey Music Service offers lessons for children and adults, tunes pianos, repairs instruments and can make the fully custom windchime set of your dreams. Talk with owner Kyle Casey about how Casey Music Service can help you with all things music.

Tap into the masculine heart through the strength of history and tradition with curated vintage religious goods by Domestic Joy

Aid his prayer with tradition and dynamic icons by Sue Forrest Artwork

Sue Forrest began in Advertising and after decades of experience in fine art, became a Certified Iconography through the Iconographic Institute in Mount Angel, Oregon. She produces icons, original and reproductions, greeting cards, fine art, and painted rocks. Along with the incredible selection original icons she’ll bring to the market, she also takes commissions for particular saints.

Celebrate his sense of whimsy with a patron saint peg doll by Whymsical Lotus

To learn more visit whymsicallotus.Etsy.com

Feed his mind with solid Catholic reading and straight-forward apologetics with used books sold by A Catholic Teachers Treasures

Tanya Valasquez, a Catholic Teacher for 21 years, is bringing her collection of Catholic resources in order, both for teenagers themselves and those who seek to be ready to answer their children’s questions arise in the search for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.

Find all this and more at The Loreto Market!

Spring Gift Guide – Gift Guide for Liturgical Living

The Loreto Market takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 1. If you’re in the Central Valley of California this is the perfect opportunity to support your local Catholic community and the artists, makers and entrepreneurs who are part of it.

Liturgical Living is the mode du jour these days, especially as activities in parishes are still limited to la vida virtual. Bring liturgical traditions into your home with:

A May Crowning – Add flair and flavor to your family’s May Crowning with May Crowning themed cookies by Cakes by Patricia

At the last Loreto Market, she made waves with her St. Nicholas and Advent Wreath cookies.

If this was December, I can’t wait to see May!

This spring, Cakes by Patricia will be selling homemade cookies – Peanut Butter & Snickerdoodle as well as May Crowning Iced Sugar Cookies (Flowers and Crowns) in Honor of our Mother Mary. After working 35 years in the educational system, Patricia retired and began baking for family and friends. All profits are donated to nonprofit organizations.

Organize family prayer with beautiful holy cards featuring fine art by Ora et Flora.

Along with the Memorare, Prayer to St. Raphael and Divine Mercy, Ora et Flora is offering a wide variety of prayers to St. Joseph to help us focus in on the Year of St. Joseph, declared by Pope Francis for this year.

Create a child-friendly shrine with saint peg dolls by Whymsical Lotus

After five years of being in business, Lotus Vele has enough saint peg dolls to fill the heavenly hosts! Find your patron saint of the patron of your gift recipient. To learn more visit whymsicallotus.Etsy.com

Let beauty inspire and deepen prayer with beautiful rosaries by Simple Beadings

Yuehesi Cuellar, owner of Simple Beadings, said, “I strive to offer affordable rosaries and jewelry to drive people closer to Christ!” At her booth you’ll find rosaries (corded, beaded, chained), religious & non- religious earrings, religious & non religious necklaces and bracelets. Learn more at @simplebeadings (Instagram) and simplebeadings.square.site .

Build your home alter or prayer corner with vintage religious goods including statues and framed prints by Domestic Joy

The joy Dezirae LaGro finds in Catholicism, homemaking and antique shopping spills over into the beauty of her booth as she brings to you Curated Catholic Treasures. Check out her instagram page of the same name.

Center your prayer around a particular devotion with spectacular icons written by Sue Forrest Artwork

Sue Forrest seeks to bring beauty to all, through the medium of paint and spread the Gospel with icons. Her breathtaking work will be on display and available for purchase. To see her past projects, visit her Facebook page, Sue Forrest Artwork.

Build your rosary supply so you have rosaries a home, in the car and on the go with rosaries by Catholic Kids

You’ll have to hurry to purchase a rosary from these ambitious entrepreneurs! The young ladies who run Catholic Kids sold out of their popular rosaries at last year’s Loreto Market. This year, their proceeds will go towards supporting Traditional Latin Mass Seminaries.

Light a candle during prayer to illuminate prayer time with candles by Healthy Mind Healthy Soul

Adriana Ramirez is will be selling a a candle perfect for May called “Mystical Rose.” “Mystical Rose in inspired by Our Lady of Guadalupe and offers notes or rose, frankincense, and Myrrh.

Integrating her passion for her profession as a future mental health counselor, and passion for her faith, Adriana , owner of Healthy Mind Healthy Soul, hit upon the idea to utilize the inspiration from her faith and the power of aroma through candles and nature’s natural scents. Thus she made candles inspired by the saints. Check out her work at on Instagram @healthymindhealthysoul_

Find all this and more on May 1 at The Loreto Market!

Spring Gift Guide – Gift Guide for Mother’s Day

Join us for The Loreto Market, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 1!

With the market taking place one week before Mother’s Day, it’s the perfect opportunity to shop local and celebrate a mother in your life.

At the Loreto Market, you will find:

Original artwork by SQHQ Art

Few reproductions could compare with an original piece of artwork. One of the best ways to add to your art collection (or your mother’s) is by shopping local. At the Loreto Market you have the opportunity to discuss her work with the artist herself. Come meet Susan Fisher and snatch up one of these beautiful paintings!

Chemical-free cleaning products by Norwex

Featuring their Safe Haven 5 Package – The EnviroCloth, Window Cloth, Dusting Mitt, Ultra Power Plus Laundry Detergent and Cleaning Paste.

Ice sugar cookies for your gathering by Cakes by Patricia

Sheep milk soap and yarn by M&J Farms plus Marcie Davis’ newly published picture book perfect for the mother who loves to read aloud!

Marcie of M&J Farms shared about this particular illustration, which may be recognizable to locals. “It’s the original farm that was settled on and has been in the family for over 100 years. The barn was there when my great grandparents, John & Anna Baptista, arrived from the Azores. John worked for Charles Geer of Geer Ranch, giving our current busy road it’s familiar name. The AB stands for Albert Baptista who, with his brother Alfred, ran a cow dairy on site, which was eventually taken over by Raymond Baptista. I tried to add a little bit of Hughson nostalgia and family pride to my book.”

The opportunity to care for herself by signing up for a course through The Woman School.

Salve for parched skin and rosaries for her and her children made by Catholic Kids.

A moment of tranquility made possible by a set of custom wind chimes made by Casey Music Service.

Kyle Casey began experimenting with creating my own wind chimes about 10 years ago. Over time I learned much about their construction and developed my own unique techniques and designs. He now sells them mostly online to those who wish to have a very specific set of notes that no other known wind chime company can do for them. He said, “I strive to provide the highest quality custom made wind chimes made with the best materials available that not only sound great but look great as well. I also strive to provide the most effective music lessons specifically tailored to each individual student.”

An Icon by Sue Forrest Artwork

The beauty of age and tradition with curated antiques Domestic Joy

Jewelry by Simple Beadings

Candles by Healthy Mind Healthy Soul

Integrating her passion for her profession as a future mental health counselor, and passion for her faith, Adriana Ramirez, owner of Healthy Mind Healthy Soul, hit upon the idea to utilize the inspiration from her faith and the power of aroma through candles and nature’s natural scents. Thus she made candles inspired by the saints. Check out her work at on Instagram @healthymindhealthysoul_

There’s more to come!

See you at the Loreto Market!

May 1

10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Spring Gift Guide – Gift Guide for Sacraments

The Loreto Market takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 1. With so many holidays and events on the calendar in the coming weeks, I thought a gift guide might be handy.

Do you have a Confirmation mass to attend in the afternoon? First Holy Communions coming up? Whether Baptisms, First Holy Communions, Confirmations or the beginning of the wedding season, at the Loreto Market we’re featuring:

Saint peg dolls by Whymsical Lotus

Home decor with spiritual themes by Simple Beadings

Curated Vintage Artwork by Domestic Joy

Original and Reproduction Icons by Sue Forrest Artwork

Handmade Rosaries by Catholic Kids

Candles by Healthy Mind Healthy Soul

There’s more to come!

See you at the Loreto Market!

What to Do with the in-between season

As I write this, it is the first day of Spring.

From the white board in front of our makeshift homeschool classroom, I can erase the word “Winter” from the combination “Winter/Spring”. We live in a form of winter/spring for a handful of months in the Central Valley. The weather warms, but might still freeze. The temperatures reach up near 70, inching bit by bit, because a cold spell and a day of rain makes us all remark how like winter it is in March.

Other states sit covered in snow, waiting for the flowers to poke through the icy layers, signaling the end of a long winter will not be too far off.

Californians start their seedlings, but plant them also, seeing the first fruits in their open fields. Farmers carry in boxes of citrus, as sweet as candy, while we smell the sweetly scented air filled with almond blossoms and pollen.

Landscape with cut flower garden and seedlings

It is winter/spring here in California when the mud puddles merge together with puddles from misdirected sprinklers, their timers signaled too soon in preparation for dryer spells. Children shed their winter clothes for lighter garments, only to shiver once the sun goes down because the mornings are below 50, the coldest temperature we generally see.

It is winter/spring as our loved ones receive the vaccine alongside the safety, hope and peace it brings to know they can gather again with loved ones will still following CDC guidance; as some of our youth return to schools and sports and order special masks and bell covers to play their preferred instrument with the victorious spirit of a high schooler who has faced something no generation before ever faced.

It is winter/spring as liturgically-focused Christian religions move through the Lenten season, with just a shot time remaining before Easter, the highest of holy days, the more triumphant, grandest, important celebration to the heart of Christian belief. To enter the church that Sunday, the church they could not enter one liturgical year ago, when doors were closed and services live-streamed and Easter egg hunts canceled.

It is winter/spring as we gather with others in small numbers or shop for plastic eggs at Target while still wearing masks, keeping our distance and trying not to make physical contact with someone we do not know, when once a handshake might have been the best approach.

It is winter/spring as my daughter bends the top line of the growth chart, yet never sleeps. As my son outgrows another size of clothes, but has surgery next month. As my oldest learns Latin but will go into 6^th grade, signaling to me the beginning of the end of her children and her emergence in a new phase of life, one I have never experienced before as a mother.

The weeds grow with the new flowers. The dahlias emerge even where the cats scratched. The rain waters the fields even as it inspires the weeds to give it one last go before the vegetable garden is planted.

Detail of cut flower garden with white garden bench

All of our lives we live in this winter/spring, with the bare ground filled to the brim with seeds and life waiting for just the right amount of daylight, warmth and water to break forth. In this season all the potential is there. We have only to wait a little longer, tend the ground a little more gently, and continue to feed the heart and soul of the project with the very best we have, the practice of virtues, including kindness, understanding and justice determined by reason and not emotion.

Understand and embrace the duality in which we must live, the tension to which we must adjust. Even as today is the first day of spring, a chill is in the air. Nothing ever fully ends or disappears, and the beauty that lies in wait for us lies within this tension.

Discover it. Embrace it. See what is has for you today.