Seasonings

I'm struck how more and more I notice and enjoy every season. This seems to be a development as I am getting older - for which I am grateful.

As a child, it seems to me the seasons are either good (i.e. sunny and we can play, or snowy and we can play) or not. It's only as one grows and begins to notice things around one that every season begins to really appreciate each of them.

For example, for some time I've noticed that autumn sunlight is different from all other seasonal sunlights. I'm not sure why - there's just a softness in the light, a diffuseness, that seems to hit around mid-September and is gone by mid-October.

Or the occassional breaks - like today, when it was 70 F outside where last week it was bitter cold, with the green grass and black and white cows grazing in the pasture behind work. The sky is a brillant blue - a spring blue, early but there.

Or the bees - February is almond blossom month, and bees are already in the fields. They're buzzing around their hives, but I see no blooms. What are they getting? Or even our bees, brining in their loads of yellow-brown pollen. I see no flowers - but something is blooming.

There is beauty in every season, from the cold and rainy of winter to the hot and stifling of summer. It's all there -it's just that I never saw it before.