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.

W is for Weather

Did you ever notice how, in conversation, if you have nothing to talk about, you talk about the weather?  In the winter, if you want to start a conversation in Arizona, just mention how lovely the weather is here compared with in other states.  In the summer, mention how hot it is.  As if these were topics that need to be discussed.  It’s going to be gorgeous or so hot you can’t stand it no matter what.  So why do we discuss it?  Just to have something to say?  I do it myself, so this isn’t a criticism.  Is it because it’s a safe topic?  Seriously, does anyone actually LIKE discussing the weather?  Like, you get up in the morning and think, “Hey, today I’m going to stand in line at Starbucks and say to someone, ‘Isn’t this lovely weather we’re having?'”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen characters discussing the weather in a book (unless it’s really unusual or noteworthy).  As I’ve said before, we do things in real life that no one writes about in books.  That’s partly because books are an escape, and if we wanted to hear about bathroom habits, we’d just call someone over 80.  Or most men.  It cracks me up when people talk about “realistic” dialog.  Honestly, no one wants to read realistic dialog.  It would be horribly boring most of the time.  Don’t believe me?  Just listen in to strangers.  It’s probably nothing interesting.

So the moral of the story?  There is none.  Other than that if you have nothing to blog about, blog about the weather.

Weekly Photo Challenge- Summer

Nothing says summer to me like the beach!  I took this photo a few years back while vacationing in the Bahamas.  I specifically wanted this shot so that I could put it as my background or screen saver and feel like I was back on the beach.  It’s like a mini-vacation on my computer.