winter in california

We're back from vacation!

This is an old photograph of my brother and me standing in the back yard on Christmas day in Southern California.  (Thanks Dad!)  I think we were about 3 and 5?  I've always loved this picture.  Partially for the color (which is better in the original but perhaps lost something in the scanning) but primarily because it's so representative of the strange (and sometimes wonderful) uni-season of the Golden State.  I grew up there.  I know it's almost always warm and ridiculously comfortable but, having lived in Oregon now for a decade, I forget about The Light in Southern California.
Man, it's beautiful.  I don't think I ever noticed it when I was there.  It's just what I always knew.  But it's so...so...(this is going to sound sort of stupid)...it's so... BRIGHT!

On this last trip we were out picking citrus on my grandfather's property.  In January.  In flip flops.

And I remembered that photograph.  And I remembered, despite the sprawl, the traffic, the excess and the haste, why people like to live there...