The sign of spring I mentioned earlier.  There’s really nothing to call winter here, and spring follows so rapidly on the heels of fall that there’s barely a blurred line between them.  Yes, the nights and days are cooler starting sometime in October, but there are only a few weeks or so when it’s too cool to eat lunch outdoors, sweater or no.

And ‘winter’ on the beach is so glorious, with few people, crisp air, and mostly sunny days.  The horizons are more subtle, there’s sometimes fog, and the gray days just accent the sunny ones even more.  I enjoy these times in which we needn’t turn on heat nor air conditioning.  It gets up to 72 or 73 during the day upstairs; by bedtime, the open windows have brought in the 65-degree air and it is comfortable to sleep.

Have I said I don’t miss the ‘seasons?’  I don’t.  They are more subtle here and I don’t miss the extremes at all.  I can drive to the mountains or the desert if I wish.  The train just went by, behind the houses across the street.  The industrialized world to the east of the house, the glories of nature’s ocean to the west…