With every Season
So, people have mentioned that Phoenix has no seasons. That it shifts from freaking hot to cool. I, too, have been guilty of thinking this, at times, when I desperately want to leave and move away to a utopic place (which I've since decided doesn't exist). But this is nonsense!
This Spring, as I sit in my hammock in February, March, and April I can smell Spring in the air. Do you have smells that bring you back? Back to a certain feeling, memory, place? For me, one of my 3 favorite smells (2 are season related) comes in and out of my backyard, as I lay and read my book, or as I walk Nerina, or as I'm laying in bed with my windows open. It's the smell of Spring...orange blossoms. There is nothing else like the sweet smell of these little orange flowers, everywhere. As I inhale, I'm immediately taken back to some fond memory, or feeling, and I am in bliss. I stop everything and inhale. I do this until I either feel lightheaded for inhaling too deeply (the exhales are no fun) or if I'm in public and I worry about what the strangers will think of me as they notice me just standing there, smelling the air. It's a bit weird, I know, but you should smell Spring...it's heaven.
The ocotillo cactus shoots out these bright red cone-shaped flowers on each "branch" - and if you eat the flower you'll taste that it's super-sweet.



Which brings me to my second favorite smell of all time...the smell of the monsoons. Now, I don't think I can really describe this smell. It's just in the air. You know when the Monsoons are coming by the air. It smells. The Creosote bush (or Greasewood) puts out this smell that is the desert, to tell us that it's going to rain. And after 2 or 3 months with nothing, no rain, the smell is welcome news! Again, I sit, I inhale, I watch the rains come in, the thunderstorms, the wind, the flash floods, the dry arroyos fill up with water to become a raging river...Summer is not subtle during the monsoons. In the southern AZ deserts, where I spend most of my summer months and weekends, the once dry desert turns into Savanna...tall, green grass, flowers everywhere, rivers, cottonwood trees blooming, snakes and other desert things out looking for the new water...a desert totally alive.
So, as I sit here in April, in 90 degree weather, I can say that, what I used to think of a place void of seasons, is full of life, color and smells!
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