Stepping out of the house lately, the air is laced with the scent of citrus blossoms, gentle but everywhere. Behind the house the tangerines, the kishu mandarins, the lemons and the grapefruits are in full blossom, while still heavy with fruit. This is now being the second year I’ve experienced this, here, at home, so I experience an epiphany as well. For so long, annual discoveries like this — the colossal eruption of the jacarandas off Prospect Ave in Los Feliz, the bottle brush tree on Henry Street in the Duboce Triangle painting the whole street red with its cast-offs — were scavenged: welcome discoveries that I was lucky to stumble across, but ultimately fleeting and borrowed. I was only ever visiting, a penny found on the street in a city I was only passing-through.

But these are our citrus trees, on our property - for as long as we are here, we will have this little annual ritual, the ceremony of it, the delight.