I'm sitting on the couch in my living room, the windows open. it is dark. the air is dry and warm, left over from the day. I can hear the creek below the house. Mei An and Tynan are in bed.
We're just getting the first few tree frogs in the warm spring nights...
I still smell of barbeque smoke, the browning butter that came up off the big shrimp I cooked in the bbq wok... and zucchini spears and portabello mushrooms marinated in a teryaki sauce...
A favorite of Mei An's, the Shrimp... and Tynan who loves so much the little tail-less pink moons browned in butter. He always seems to go for where the tail was, the skinny section, first. He says it is "cwunchy."
I have missed writing like this, sitting in peace, on the couch and saying what I "see".
the air outside is just how I like it. We might as well be in San Diego, the desert ocean, beach that doesn't sweat...the air is dry, the leaves of the trees now are supple, a maiden's palm, delicate and smooth.
The maples are my favorite for that. The tips of the pines have become pale green, new growth. The ponderosas that surround the house, sentries in the wind, are deep green all the way up, until the tip.
They are said to grow 12 inches on average every year. The one outside my window is nearly 70' tall. that's an old tree. When we cut 35 trees to clear the land and use the money to adopt Mei An, I insisted on leaving that one.
Now with the big incense cedars, they are almost my favorite things outside my window. My all time favorite though is the lone Madrone tree outside my bedroom window. Its orange bark almost glows in the right light and the tropical-looking leaves are so opposite all the other trees. It will begin dropping them any time now, when all the other trees are greening, the Madrone, a sort of evergreen, will molt into summer and in the fall it will look most healthy.