This weekend I visited the Carlsbad Flower Fields with a friend. It was my first time. We didn't know we were going on Kids Day. And there LOTS of families there! It was a gorgeous San Diego Saturday full of warm sunshine. Spending it outside in the beautiful flower fields was the perfect way to enjoy the weather.
Beautiful flower fields (and, yes, that IS a port-a-potty in the corner...). Carlsbad is famous for these flowers: ranunculus. Isn't that a fun word? I am pretty fond of them. Here's a closer shot of these cute flowers.
Aren't they pretty? And they come in such great colors too!
Here's a view of the fields overlooking Carlsbad, the outlet mall (yay!), and the ocean. Not a bad view!
It is spring in San Diego. I think spring may just be my favorite season here, and I know we don't get a lot in the way of seasons. But spring definitely exists. It is the one time of year when this near-desert locale is green. We have been getting a lot of rain this winter, at least by San Diego standards, and it is totally worth it. All the hills are lush, and random flowers pop up along the freeways. It is warm (usually), but not yet hot and dry like summer. Everything smells awesome. And I really like to smell things.
One of the greatest scents God created is orange blossoms. Seriously, if Estee Lauder could bottle that stuff I would wear nothing else. It is amazing. At my parents' house, the air is so heavily perfumed with it this time of year, it's intoxicating.
It has rained every Saturday for the last four or five weeks now. I am a little upset that we've had sunny, beautiful days during the week while I'm sitting in my office, and rain and wind on my days off. But...today there are blue skies, some big puffy clouds, and a spring breeze. And the forecast for the weekend is sunny!
So welcome, Spring, to San Diego. We're so glad to see you again.
Billie Burke said that (FYI: she was the actress who played Glinda, the good witch in The Wizard of Oz.).
Last week I went to a free concert at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown San Diego. Justin Nozuka was playing. (Very talented young man--check him out!) It was a great free event, hosted by the radio station Sophie @ 103.7. It was low-key and Nozuka has this soulful voice that's so easy to listen to.
But the reason I'm posting this blog is not about the music, although I would recommend the artist. The reason I'm posting is the mid-life crisis lady in the women's restroom.
After the show ended, and before my friends and I headed out in the Gaslamp District to walk around, we hit the loo. There was a woman in one of the stalls chatting away--I assumed she was talking on the phone. No one else in the restroom was responding to her, or even seemed to be listening. But after she left the stall and went to the sink, she continued her ranting and raving about how she wished she was young again. "I wish I was young and beautiful again." It was so much more fun.
I peered through the crack behind the door of my own stall. No phone. No blue tooth attached to her ear. She was definitely talking to herself. For what seemed like endless minutes. I was afraid to come out. I didn't want to walk out in all of my twenty-three years while she bitterly commiserated about her lost (and apparently ancient) youth.
When I was a kid, my dad used to jokingly sing the golden ticket song from the old 1970s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which was, in fact a musical). Only he changed the words. Instead of singing "I've got a golden ticket, I've got a golden twinkle in my eye..." yada yada, he would sing, "I've got a golden ticket. Nobody else but me! I've got a golden ticket. Nee-ner, nee-ner, nee!"
That's what I felt like I would doing to this bitter, fifty-something woman if I walked out in my wrinkle-free, no gray-hairs, everything-sitting-exactly-where-it's supposed-to glory. Gallivanting about the restroom of the Hard Rock waving my beautiful youth in her face. So I waited until she finally left to emerge, her last remark to herself, "Well, at least I own my own home. At least I can say that."
I like Billie Burke's quirky comment about age and cheese. I hope that someday when I'm "old," I don't ever wish to be something else, or somewhere else in life. I like to think of old age as an award--gray hairs being the crown of glory, of course. Age demands respect, and that starts with the self.
Is it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself strove toward what we call beauty? Face to face with any one of the elaborate flowers which man's cultivation has had nothing to do with, it does not seem fantastic to me. We put survival first. But when we have a margin of safety left over, we expend it in the search for the beautiful. Who can say that Nature does not do the same?
