Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone

Desert Botanical Gardens; Phoenix AZ
Photo Credit: Doree Weller

I never realized how true that was until I moved to Arizona.  At first, I loved the baking heat (dry heat is really different), the comforting stretches of brown, and the sameness of everything.  The last few years I lived in Pennsylvania were chaotic, and the fact that everything was different than I was used to but looked so uniform comforted me.  We lived in Arizona for 7 years, and it was a really good 7 years.  I got my Master’s Degree, met my best friend, my partner, and found a kindred spirit.  Finding three friends who are “keepers” is always a beautiful thing.

Texas looks a lot like Pennsylvania (at least the part we’ll be living in).  It’s got rolling hills, lots of green, and frequent summer thunderstorms.  My arthritis doesn’t bother me so much here in Arizona, but I didn’t really know how much my heart yearned for green until I learned that I’ll soon be living in it again.

When I left PA seven years ago, I couldn’t wait to get away.  I didn’t look back and wasn’t sad to leave it behind.  The timing was right, and I obviously had something to learn.  It’s going to be with great sadness that I leave Arizona, as it’s been very good to me.  I’m taking away far more than I could have anticipated, and I’ll always be connected to this place.

I’m glad I moved to Arizona and had time to appreciate what I left behind.  Now, I’m heading to the next adventure!

-Hunter S Thompson

Spring?

Desert Botanical Gardens, Phoenix AZ
Photo credit: Doree Weller

While the rest of the world welcomes spring (and in parts of the US, they still have some snow), here in Arizona, we’re already baking.  Temperatures have hit 100 and the flowers are already dying.  Spring, if you can call it that, happens so fast here that I barely have time to notice it.

In Pennsylvania, we had a spring whose length of time varied.  Sometimes it lasted a long time, and the crocuses were often up by Easter.  Sometimes the spring was shorter, but always there.  I never realized how much I’d miss having 4 distinct seasons until I moved somewhere that didn’t have them.  That’s the way of it, though.  When you’re living through something, it’s easy to take for granted, because it’s always been that way.

When I first moved here, the brown seemed soothing, and the sameness seemed clean and relaxing.  It still seems that way, but I miss the quirky personality of the jumble created by all the differences back East.  Some houses are new, some are old, but they don’t match one another.  There are greens and browns and purples and blues and reds.  It’s like an abstract painting rather than a landscape sometimes.

I throw open my windows and enjoy the fleeting spring for as long as I can out here.  For in the rest of the world, it may still be spring, but in Arizona, we’ve moved on to summer.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Green

Yay!  All things green!  It’s one of my three favorite colors (blue, purple, and green, for those of you keeping track).  It would be easy for me to post al pictures of plants and pretty trees, but I’m not going to do that…

Yummy and happy breakfast at the Olive Mill.

Midnyte loves rolling around in the grass. Or she used to. When we lived in PA and had grass.

My office. 🙂