Perfection

When I was thinking of a word to describe this time of year, I came up with "perfection."  (Though I then remembered that lemon Jell-O salad by the same name.  Canned crushed pineapple, grated carrots, celery, and cabbage.  Very '50s.)  Except for the black flies in the garden that can bite real chunks out of you, the entire month of May seems perfect.

Bleeding Heart now in bloom by my front walk

Tender leaves have now uncurled on all the trees.  Violets proliferate.  Women (mostly women) line up at our local farm stand to buy pansies, pots of sage and parsley, six-pack trays of lettuce and snap pea seedlings.  I put on gardening gloves and pull out thorny tendrils or dead grass from around day lilies.  I breathe in the loamy air and let my mind roam as my fingers do the work.  Or I sit out in the afternoon with a glass of white wine as I look up at the pines, listen to the crows, and think what to plant in the garden.

And then, just today, our local farmers' market opened for yet another season that runs from the first Saturday in May to the end of October.  I am always an early customer--there to bag a vendor's excellent spinach while it lasts.  Or to position myself in front of the French pastries before the queue lengthens.  Even at that, the croissants were gone by the time I got there.  But I was early enough for two vendors to tell me that I was their first customer of the season.  And for a third to say that I was her first customer, ever.

The man selling olives and artisan cheeses was there.  The pottery woman.  (But not her partner, the meat man, mad at his butcher, it seems, and so not selling his breakfast links and grass-fed lamb this year.)  The apple orchard people who sell pies were there.  The flower man with his jars of honey and maple syrup--from his own bees and trees.  The coffee man with donuts on the side.  The Thai, Nigerian, and Indian food vendors plus a Chinese family making dim sum. The Scotsman with cups of hot chai.  The woman with hand-made cloth bags.  And a multitude of farmers with seedlings of all sorts--from parsley to johnny-jump-ups.

 

 

As the season progresses, this is where I will get my bouquets of flowers, ingredients for pasta sauce, chickpea masala, crisp heads of lettuce.  People sometimes ask about my garden.  I don't do veggies, I say, just flowers. (And then I don't pick them, preferring to let them have their day in the sun.)  I did try growing veggies for a time, but the sun wasn't right, or the soil was too acid, or the resident woodchuck got to them first, or the deer.  With the farmers' market just down the street, I decided to let others do the growing for me ... and I'd be their faithful customer.  It's a community thing.

When I got home from the market this morning, I spread out my purchases.  Sweet potatoes, bok choy, sunflower sprouts, spinach, alu palak in puff pastry, a lemon and blueberry pâtisserie, rhubarb, daffodils, and ... a fabulous lemon tart sprinkled with powdered sugar and decorated with candied violets.

And, hey, I may have cracked the "Comments" problem.  If anyone is of a mind, go to the Comments box at the end of any posting, write in a comment, click "Post Comment," check "Anonymous" when a box comes up asking who you are, then click "Post Comment" again (or maybe it's "Publish").  I'm still running tests on this, but give it a try.  (If you want me to know who you are, put some sort of identification with your comment.  Even just your first name.)

I still promise to write up a posting at some future date explaining the name I've given this blog:  Door Number 8.