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I’m so glad to be back in California. After only two weeks away, so much has changed. It’s that time of year, spring making its splashy debut. While I was gone, the mustard greens in my garden sprouted their tall spikes of yellow.

Screaming orange poppies are everywhere.

Only a month or so ago, this fancy perfumed showgirl looked brown and withered in the pot on my deck. Look at her now.

I took a break from work today and biked out to Wilder and all along my beloved coastal trail. Spring on the Central Coast. It was all so familiar, exciting yet comforting. The wild afternoon wind bringing the heavy scent of freshly fertilized crops all the way from Davenport. The hemlock with its “bloody” stalk, the wild radish taking over the bike path and getting in the way of any ant trying to walk a straight line. The sun was warm enough to lure a 3-foot-long snake from under a rock. The red-tail hawk with lunch in its talons and the wind chopping up the water of an extra low tide. Naturalists hate the non-native Scotch Broom with its proliferation of yellow flowers. They call it a noxious weed. But honestly, who can blame the plant for wanting to live here?

During my ride, I felt an idiotic grin on my face, like a drunk. No, more like a little kid who hasn’t yet discovered that the world of spring also contains war and suffering and cancer and death and pain and confusion and blight and heart break and bone break and petty meanness and profound wanton destruction and child abuse and animal abuse and ...okay, enough.

After more than 25 years in California, 10 of them by the ocean, this finally feels like home. I realized that during this past trip to Philadelphia. I no longer felt in tune with the geographic and human landscape of Langdon St. where I grew up, and downtown Philly where I spent my college and early working years, and New Hope, where I was married and where my sister still lives.

I didn't know the names of the trees there. The air felt and smelled foreign to me. I didn’t sense the subtleties of climate change as 80-degree weather turned overnight into an ice storm; the snow and sleet came out of nowhere. I felt like a tourist in my own past. Nothing wrong with that. It's just good to be home.