daily bliss: chartreuse

backyard, leafing

I love these liminal days of early Spring, where each day reveals a new leaf, a young blossom, and everything shivers and shimmers with the promise of life. I love the shades of green--a true chartreuse--that are achingly new. None of summer's overblown fecundity, but instead a stage of possibility.

This morning I braved an arctic blast of air--20+mph winds whipping off the lake--to visit the first farmers' market of the season. Only a handful of vendors were there, with limited wares, but the familiar faces, all bundled up, bespoke a springtime happiness and a survivor's pride. There's a certain moral quality to surviving a long, arduous, frigid winter. Having lived on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, I can say that there's *not* the same moral quality to surviving a long, arduous, sweaty summer. (but I'm open to argument).

I chatted with my "summer friends"--the others on the farmers' market board of directors with me, my farmer friends--and made plans to go work out at T and J's farm (we have an agreement based upon labor/food exchange). I'm ready to trade in my mostly intellectual labor for something a little more physical. It looks like I'll be laying irrigation pipe and plastic, caging baby tomato plants, and hauling straw in the next few weeks, as spring slides into summer.


roseate geranium blooms







fresh, local spinach and asparagus



Everything on the edge of mystery, this moment so beautiful in its transcience.

Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.