When I was in grammar school we had spelling books with wonderful drawings on the covers that depicted spring, summer, fall, and winter on a farm. It took me a long time to realize that these scenes were not the figment of some illustrator's imagination, like cities on Mars. I knew about farms, sure, but not seasons, at least, not seasons like that. I only knew California seasons.

Many people, including many Californians, sad to say, are unaware that California even has seasons. This is due to the miracle of irrigation. Without irrigation, California's seasons are as severe as any, but they are not seasons of cold and heat. They are seasons of light and water, but most of all, water.

One way to look at California seasons to divide them into three: the dry season, the rainy season, and the wildflower season. There is only one time when there is enough water and enough light at once, and that is spring — about late February through early June. This is when the earth flowers.

A biologist would say that water is the limiting factor in Californian ecology. The limiting factor — the hardest thing to survive, in an ecosystem — is what every species builds its life around. So, where I live, everything is adapted to somehow survive, not winter, but fall. Autumn is when the natural summer drought, which probably began the previous April, begins to take its toll. October is the February of California. Everything waits and hopes for rain, the way, in other temperate climates, it waits for warmth.

This year, the rains have been very late. We got bits here and there, but the big rains held off all through the late fall. There were wildfires in Southern California in December this year. But now the black clouds are being driven in by winds that break branches and cover the ground in yellow leaves. Our first real storm has come at last. I sowed vetch and ryegrass in the fallow vegetable beds and covered them with straw. The rain will bring up the seeds.

Winter, my real California winter, is a series of vast, slow Pacific storms that dump forty or fifty inches of rain on us between October and April. It is dark, bonechillingly dank, and a good time to watch the fire in your woodstove, card wool, quilt, make cookies, play Scrabble, and stay home. The livestock hunkers down under shelter in deep bedding and rests. Winter is dirty in the country. Firewood, muddy dogs, muddy feet, dripping raincoats. The hills turn from tawny to bright green, jewel-eyed newts and huge yellow slugs perambulate, the sky is gray, storm surf slams the coast, and I'm happy our big new woodshed is finished, and even has an electric light!

Winter here is not as bad for working dogs as colder places, but there are drawbacks. Hair sheep cannot be worked in the rain, as they get pneumonia easily if they stand in the rain after getting hot. It is generally bad footing, and many's the time I've gone down in the mud trying to be nimble. But I love winter. It's a time of regeneration. The wizened vegetation bleakly enduring the dust of fall is a distant memory. Now we can curse the mud and huddle indoors. The year turns on its axis.