I hear their morning song when I wake and I realize in a moment they have returned. Each year we have two nesting spots that bring them by to gather twigs, fly overhead when I am in the garden or hanging clothes. It is a funny thing but they seem curious about our activity as much so as we watch theirs. When the babies are ready to fly later in the hot days of summer, they soar to heights above the small clearing with parents encouraging, flanking their side, frantic wings flapping, vocalizations from all. When they leave in the fall I miss them terribly.

There are such clear cycles, the mountain blues return mid april shortly after we see the first waking chipmunks. The osprey come home in a cluster as though the memo has been sent to all their kin. The first hummingbird was in our hedge April 15th last year and while I haven’t seen them yet, it should be soon. The rhythm of our space on the planet is predictable, and routine creates a sense of belonging.

In a note to accompany a recently finished painting, I thought about my sense of ownership. I like the feeling of belonging to a place as much or more as it can ever belong to us. I have been a long time in this particular bit of B.C., short miles from where I grew up I ride my bike to the beach repeating  summer days of the past forty-five years! It is a very similar bike to the one I purchased when we moved here and at 11 I bartered with the owners of Mainprize second-hand for an affordable 15$. On my 49th birthday my husband surprised me with the new version, and now complete with basket and bells it is a joyful renewal of spring to begin picking up my mail via morning bike rides.

There are thin lines between the ways of living and ways of sharing day-to-day experience – what is firm reality, what is memory, what is imagining. I think perhaps it is why my sense of abstract and realism blur, I am not always clear on the difference.