Fairfax Farmers Market

One of the best things about the Wednesday Fairfax market is there are no crowds or lines at the produce stands. One seller claps when I stop to study a bucket of sunflowers in the middle of his stall. Another patiently waits with a smile while I count pennies for exact change. The other best thing is the market is only a couple blocks from the Fairfax Scoop, a closet storefront that always has a line out the door for organic ice cream.

The lines at the Fairfax market though are at the food sellers. Tie dyed families and friends sit in moon shaped groups picnicking on the lawn in the park on Bolinas Road. They balance paper plates of Himalayan food with one hand, eat kettle korn by the fistfuls, bags of springs greens and beets at their side. Couples stroll with ice cream cones. Orange and purple painted comets extend from the smiles and cries of children chasing bubbles nearly the size of the redwood trees that ring the park. A solo musician belts old Van Morrison songs. I'm wishing the cute guy was with me.

Cruising the vendors I try to convince myself that I need ice cream, honey lavender vanilla, chocolate, now. Cardboard would be fine as long as it was made at the Scoop. Skip dinner or have dessert first, I reason. No. Yes. No. I pass a paper sign tacked to a tree above two chairs and a dinner plate sized table advertising a tarot reader who has taken her cards elsewhere. Is their ice cream in my future, I want to ask.

Nearby a woman stands quietly behind rows of probiotic bottled drinks and across the aisle a man and a woman hand out samples of nutmoo, a milk made with nuts as the name implies. A canopied collection of tables laden with eggs is vacant with signs for Judy's eggs at $2 for eighteen. I read the sign twice to make sure I got it right and then wonder if there is something wrong with them. But not for long. The smell of the Swedish waffle truck parked at the curb makes my mouth water and I start towards it but something else catches me, the scent of flowers. An entire field of lavender in bloom, laid out in bar after beautiful bar of hand made soap. There is no one there though and I laugh thinking they are probably at the Fairfax Scoop.