Back and Forth and Back Again

No posts for awhile- I have been traveling. 

In early December I headed back home for two weeks to check in on things and to do some work related things. It was lovely to be back in California. There were winter storms and big waves and I had a fire in the fireplace almost every night. This time I decided that I wasn't going to drive myself nuts trying to clean and organize everything. I will save that for this summer when I am back for longer. 

 From a far, we have been reading and hearing about the drought back home. It was so nice to walk along a rushing SLO stream downtown and to wear rain boots and walk through puddles and smell rain in the air. It was joyous. 

 There was plenty of seasonal color on the trees- golden fig leaves and fuzzy sycamore. 

 There were several storms in the short time that I was home. During the largest one, I was over at good friends Diana and Rob's next door. Rob had gone down to the pier and bought several delicious Dungeness crabs and they both kindly invited me over to share the feast. Both of them have been such wonderful supporters of STAR STUFF. On another evening I went over to their house to watch their nephew on the Discovery channel- he is a NASA engineer and worked on the Mars Rover Curiosity. It was so great to see people doing exploratory science on Mars and that the same thrill of discovery that Carl Sagan described in his work with robots on Mars goes on and that he inspired so many of the scientists working on these missions today.  

The last time I was home, I didn't make it down to the beach even once. I was doing a top to bottom cleaning and organizing of the house as well as taking care of some other things- this time I walked to the beach often. The smell of the ocean says home- it's one of the main reasons we changed houses here in Mauritius to a home that is closer to the sea. 

And then there was the garden- I had my hands in the soil and weeded and planted and enjoyed every minute of it. I don't have an after picture, but this is the before.