If you needed proof that Southern California does indeed have seasons, here it is -- jumbled and messy and overlapping, but seasons nonetheless.

       On Saturday morning, my garden was at last a springtime masterpiece -- the bird-and-bug-friendly, drought-tolerant flowers blooming, the sprinkler system now finally, expensively repaired and doling out water as stingily as Queeg rationed strawberries aboard the ''Caine.''  It was exactly as I had envisioned it, and I drank in the place as I drank coffee at the glass-topped terrace table.

    And then I went to the mailbox. There, in large, peremptory letters, was the order from the fire department. Brush clearance inspections begin May 1. I would have all of a dozen days, inclusive, with my fresh, cool spring garden before I'd have to start paring and snipping, readying it for the sere, blazing summer.

   To the doubters of our local seasons, I offer this as proof. Where the winters are long and summers short, the summer is all the more precious for its brevity. I know because I grew up in such a place. Here, we just turn that on its head. When it's a hundred degrees at high noon, with only the promise of many more such days before us, it'll be the grey spring mornings brightened by the fauve daubs of my flowers that I will be cherishing.