Don’t mind me. Just go about your business. I have to do this – it is the peak of the spring blooming season – I must take note of it here, on Ocean.
I meet my younger girl at the farmers’ market. We always meet right here, by the L’Etoile (these days Graze) food cart.
She’s up north for the week-end; indeed, she’ll be my first overnight guest at the farmhouse. And I clean in preparation for this, as if the farmhouse needed cleaning, as if I didn’t make fun of my grandmother for cleaning in preparation for our visits many years ago.
We walk the market, drinking in the lilacs, the lilies of the valley, all of it and no, I do not need to buy flowers – I have plenty back at the farmette, but my favorite vendors are showing off blooms proudly, inexpensively and so I sample some of theirs, to compare, to enrich what is at home.
At home. Ed and I are tackling issues in the garden. Ant hills in flower beds. Weeds, always the weeds. The horribly invasive bramble that crawls underground, looking for a place to poke through. Ed is dumping shredded bark (free, from Madison; thank you Madison!) in great amounts in any number of places. I dig, plant, pull out – all of it, until it’s time for supper.
At the farmhouse, I am honoring the spring trilogy – the flowers that are such a gift now, a heady mix of – yes, of course, lilac, and (from our yard) lilies of the valley. Childhood pals of mine, now again growing under my nose. And tulips. Don’t forget the tulips.
Together at last.
Okay, done posting about May flowers. Tomorrow, I’ll try to look beyond the garden. It’ll be hard.
