Category: seasons

The painted ladies

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On my way home today, I stopped to say hello to the mountains.

Image credit: allposters.com

But while I originally had pulled over to say hello to the mountains, I also got to say hello to the painted ladies – the butterflies.

There are hundreds of thousands of them, all passing through and I’m lucky enough to live along their migration path.

No one knows exactly why they choose to come here, but I’m happy they do.

I heard they are headed west. Maybe they’re chasing the sun.

So, as I sat alone outside my car, I blew kisses to the mountains, to thank them for being so magnificent.

Image credit: travelandleisure.com

I blew kisses to the butterflies as they flew by, to wish them good luck on their journey.

It’s days like these when I know I wouldn’t be able to live in a place where the sun seldom shines.

There wouldn’t be nearly enough mountains that compare to Ojai mountains and there definitely wouldn’t be enough painted ladies.

I hope they all reach their destinations.

And if they really are chasing the sun, I hope they catch it.

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when the sun changes

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How do you make the sun come up faster?

I asked the internet, but there weren’t any answers. It didn’t seem like anyone has ever asked this question before.

I’ve been trying to figure it out recently. The sun goes down later now, which I like, but I forgot that it would also start to rise later.

I’m not mad about it necessarily, I actually like to watch the sunrise sometimes. I just wish it would still come up at six every morning instead of seven, like it does now.

Image via blogspot.com

I always say that I wish sleep was optional. I love waking up early and I love staying up late, which becomes problematic when I’m running on five hours of sleep and way too much caffeine.

I fell asleep with my window open today. I didn’t really think much of it.

It was about eleven thirty in the morning when I went to sleep and I woke up three hours later.

It had gotten much breezier by the afternoon. And the light had changed.

I’ve always loved how the shifting sun makes everything look different. There is a distinct difference between how the light looks in the morning and in the afternoon. At 9 am, everything is bright, more of a white light. But by 3 or 4p m, it’s so much more yellow. And it feels different too, especially in the summertime.

I don’t know how to describe it exactly, I just know how it feels.

I’m still trying to find more ways to make the sun come up faster. I’ll let you know if I do.

my thoughts on time.

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I prefer not to measure time in minutes.

Maybe that’s because it scares me,
time does.

But, it’s comforting to think
that the same wet grass I
walked across today
will soon turn brittle and dry.

“The Persistence of Memory” via allthatsinteresting.com

It’s comforting to think
that, with the help of the rain,
the fields will fill up with wheat,
which will later be cut down
and turned into hundreds of bales of hay,
all lining the bottom of the hillsides
in a grid of little golden rectangles.

Then, in time, they will be shipped off
to somewhere far away from here
and the cows will return to eating
the new grass, gently swishing
their tails as they chew.

It’s comforting to think that
the world will continue to spin
and the sun will set tomorrow
and the next day,
just as it is meant to.

And I hope,
that in time,
I will see, and do, and live
just as I am meant to.

Driving in the Rain

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I went for a drive tonight.

First, I made a left turn onto the highway at 9:17pm.

It wasn’t raining yet, just a slight drizzle. The roads were just starting to get wet. I forgot how much darker it is when there’s a storm coming.

As I got closer to town, I saw some couples wandering up and down main street, bundled up in coats and jackets, strolling under yellow light and holding hands.

I watched a little boy running along the sidewalk past a restaurant, clutching the straps of his backpack tight against his sides, the pom-pom on top of his beanie bouncing up and down as he went. I wonder where he was going.

By 9:25 the rain had started to come down a bit more. I rolled down the window to feel the cold.

I rolled along to a four way stop. There was no one else waiting. So, I looked up towards the street light.

A dull orange beam perfectly showed the rain coming down, lighting up thousands of little droplets falling from the sky.

I stuck my hand out the window, felt the rain hit me for a moment, then signaled right and moved on.

The story of kale, tangerines, and the realizations I made.

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I ate a piece of kale the other day.

It was growing in a garden box at school, so I pulled a leaf off of the plant and ate it.

It was a nice, sturdy piece of kale. It tasted pretty good. I continued munching on it as I walked over to the baseball field.

Photo Credit: Pinterest.com

Kale can be a nice snack, if you’re into dark leafy greens. But, as many experienced plant-eaters know, raw kale is quite tough to chew.

My jaws were getting a little bit tired, so I switched over to eating a different leaf that I had also picked from the garden box. I’m not sure what plant this was, but it was softer and sweeter than the kale.

As I was chewing, I twirled the piece between my thumb and my pointer finger.

I started to study the leaves. The kale was dark and rough. It was much more aggressively textured than the other leaf.

It was at that moment when I stopped chewing, for I noticed dozens of very tiny, white bugs all along the sides of the leaves.

I swallowed my bite, then tossed the remnants of my half-eaten leaves aside. I decided not to dwell on it too much, because I didn’t want the thought of the bugs to take away from the otherwise positive experience I had eating them.

(I would like to apologize to the innocent lives I took that day. I didn’t thoroughly inspect the leaves before eating them, and that was selfish of me. To the bugs that once inhabited the kale: I am sorry.)

On a completely unrelated note, this morning my parents and I went out to our tangerine trees. It was time to prune them. After about an hour of picking fruit and chopping branches, my dad said to me: “This is a chore that very few other people your age have to do, but you have to remember that it just makes you more cosmopolitan.”

Though I didn’t really enjoy being outside when it was 40 degrees, I did find comfort in the fact that our work would provide more fruit for us next season.

I never realized it before, but I am so thankful that I know how to take care of citrus trees.

I live in a place where I am fortunate enough to grow my own food. I take that for granted.

I hope that I will always have this luxury, bugs and all.

febuary 14th’s epiphany

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IMG_1437.jpg.jpegwow! we are lucky lucky to be alive. i know sometimes we get sad or angry or embarrassed or even feel all those silly human things at once, but have you ever thought about just how lucky we are to be alive at all?!

appreciate everything! soak in as much as you can as often as you can! talk to people you don’t usually and ask them about their day or about their dreams! confess your love to someone! get rejected and get over it, just to say you did it! get a shitty tattoo! make a change in the world! make your friend your valentine or your mom! stand up for someone! kiss your dog! love yourself the most! hug your friends or a stranger! tell your family you love them! make up with the people you got in a fight with! reach out to someone you miss! make the first move! tell your parents how much you appreciate them even if they make you angry! live in the moment! go out! surf! manifest positivity! go, go, go live. who cares? woohoo, we are so lucky!!

LIVE BY THIS: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” -alfred tennyson

Home

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Photo Credit: outsidevan.com

I’ve lived in the same place my whole life, but I’ve never realized how beautiful it is until recently.

Maybe I just didn’t notice it before or I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it, but lately I catch myself staring up at the mountains.

It has been raining a lot lately. On my drive home, I noticed that the north-facing slopes are so much greener than the south-facing ones.

But Dad says this isn’t supposed to happen. South and west-facing slopes are usually the greenest, at least where we are, because of sunlight and rainwater, he explained. The south-facing Topa Topas are just dry because of their rocky terrain.

I’m not sure why even still I think of the fire when I’m admiring the mountains. Maybe it made me appreciate them more.

The trees still seem like skeletons to me. They are black and withered and don’t really fit in with the bright grass that’s growing in. They used to be so much greener. But at least they are still standing. I’m thankful for that.

There isn’t really much to do in this sleepy town, especially after having been here for sixteen years. But despite that, I can’t think of a better place to have grown up.