Haiku Friday

Her palm pressed the knife
slowly through the round of cheese.
I was next in line.

Summer Sunflowers

I can't remember the last time I bought flowers or the last time I enjoyed a bunch as much as the sunflowers I brought home Sunday. They're lemon yellow sunflowers, cut before they've had a chance to make seeds. The centers are thick with deep yellow petals and even the buds are beginning to burst with yellowness.

There's something about the way they stand in the vase, their heads held ready, not in prayer but in praise of the day, that makes me happy. As if at any moment they're going to break into a song, a bit of morning gospel or early evening Motown. I swear they have personality. There's one that stands differently, hangs back, refuses to face any direction I suggest. I've decided it's the prettiest back of a sunflower I've ever had.

I've thought about this before, this natural season of flowers. How their seasons mark the passing time; paper whites after Christmas, then tulips and ranuculus for my birthday. How the field flowers, rainbow asters, calliopsis and sweet williams don't bloom until after the last cap and gown has been stored away.

And how sunflowers any other time of the year, except now, when the sun has changed; has put on some blush; how only now do sunflowers seem right. Against all this late summer light.

Sunflowers for the Conscious Shopper's caring that made my day.

Haiku Friday

Nine sweet yellow plums
gleaned from the muse for my lunch.
A few more each year.

Kale Flowers

I've found something better than kale - kale flowers.

The cute guy insists on calling this new food broccoli, but it's not. It's kale before it's gone to seed, before the flowers have had a chance to bloom. And it's baby kale leaves on tender stems; perfect to eat raw. Which is what I did, chopped into a salad with coins of carrots, greens and avocado.

The stems provided a satisfying crunch, the baby leaves a taste of living on a farm (my constant dream) and the scatter of kale buds simply looked pretty. Which is precisely why I bought the kale flowers to begin with. The taste is a cracker jack surprise.

To the tell the truth I thought I was buying broccoli with a purple green mixed in. The stems are identical to young off shoots and without glasses the leaves looked the same too. Thankfully another shopper asked the grower what it was. I would have simply called it, that funny broccoli.

Now that I know though, I will enjoy kale primarily as a means to get to this sweet time of the blossoms.

Haiku Friday

A parrot tulip six days old.
Slicing open squash
I found spouted seeds, green stems;
leaves wanting to grow.

Garbage Bags

Do you know where your flowers come from?
The cute guy and I have been talking about the garbage. The first time I brought up the conversation though, he left the room.

Garbage is his domain; all of which I'm appreciative of however cliche' our roles can be. I simply brought up that, perhaps, maybe, with a little sugar, we could not put the trash in plastic bags. Ah jeez, you would have thought I'd asked him to put it in his socks before it went to landfill.

My idea was to get a small container to empty into the outside trash can. It wouldn't have to be big; we generate about a plastic grocery bag of landfill a week and we collect the plastic bags from co-workers. We put our recycling in reusable canvas bags. Not using a plastic bag for garbage didn't seem like a big deal.

Two days later the cute guy called me at work to say I was right. We shouldn't use plastic. He'd finally realized I wasn't asking him to wrap the trash in newspaper or his socks. But he explained he didn't want to toss the garbage loose into the outside can. "It has to be in something."

"Why?" I asked.

"Otherwise it will be a mess for Lance." (Our legendary garbage man.)

I fell in love with the cute guy all over again. But I didn't give up on getting rid of the plastic.

Yesterday the answer came to me in a bag of tortilla chips he walked to the store to buy on a crave. The empty bag fit perfectly in the cupboard garbage rack. And tonight I realized the bread bags I've saved would also be a good fit. We don't need to buy a new container or collect other people's garbage; just look inside our own.

And we all lived happily ever after.

China Lilies

I don't often look to buy flowers but occasionally at the farmers' market there are those that look for me and then without a question I'm taking them home. That was the case with the bunch of china lilies above. There were two buckets of them calling my name. I wanted them all.

I have a soft spot for old fashioned field grown and small plot cut flowers. They have a character that hot house flowers have lost along with their natural growing seasons. I may be delusional but I swear I can smell the difference.

It's not hard actually. Imagine a hot house rose and then one from your neighbors front yard. Pick the neighbors that could be your grandparents. Their roses will smell the best. Can you tell the difference? Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. One has history and sunshine. The other is an industrially grown resemblance of a flower, likely grown to fit a marketing plan for color, size and shipping convenience.

The difference goes beyond smell though. Flowers show everything on their face. Those grown as industrial commodities reveal it as surely as a bunch of laughing organic china lilies.

Don't believe me though. Check it out for yourself and see which calls your name.

And then bring them home!

Iceland Poppies

The Muse brought me a bouquet of iceland poppies on Sunday morning from the farmers' market. Each blossom was crimped in it's egg shaped hairy shell. The first orange blossom hatched by noon.

Three days later they are continuing in shades and combinations of pink, yellow, cream and more orange. The prickly skins drop to the table, the flowers opening like cups and bowls and maturing into flat saucers, the inner pod an Alice in Wonderful cup with sugary stamens surrounding it.

Tonight I carried them through the house, from the kitchen to the living room, to the table and back again. Wherever I was, they were too. I set them in the late light, approached them from every side. But the cute guy captured them best - all fuzzy stems and papery petals.

Iceland poppies have always been one of my favorites in the garden but I've never had an entire bunch in the house. They're such decadence I nearly need to pinch myself to be sure I'm real.

Two For One

We were having company for dinner. And I wanted flowers for the table.

But I was wavering after splurging on too many organic cherries.



Then I picked up a bunch of onions for the meal. It took a minute to connect the flying object in the air to the onions in my hand.

But once I did I had flowers for the table.

Definitely a good find from Marin Roots Farm. And the onions were inspiring too.

Flower Talk

I remember being a kid and knowing that flowers were the most magical thing on the planet. I talked to them, hid in them, stole them out of other peoples yards.

I started buying and selling them before I was able to vote. And then they started talking back.

Those were heady years. I was in love with every season. The growers pampered and grumbled at me in turns. And I adored them and their harvests. But I bought on personality, on mojo. The flowers winked and said, "buy me." And I did. They were an easy sell from there.

Now I have my favorite growers at the farmers' market; Rose, who sells raspberries in the summer had the best spring anemones I've seen in double digit years. And Devoto Gardens has fine field flowers. "Our guys have worked for us for twenty years," he once told me. It shows. Their flowers laugh, they grin, they pick you up and twirl you around.

But a lot of flowers don't have the spark they once did. A fresia that looks and smells like a fresia but doesn't flirt isn't really a fresia at all. The same with an alstromeria lily. If it's color isn't as saturated as a home grown tomato something is wrong.

The flowers I see these days in stores are imported. And they're old. I wish I could get tell you the formula but it's an instinct learned over time.

Next time you're at the store or the market though, ask a bunch of flowers if they want to dance. You may hear the answer before the question is even fully formed.

If they say yes, I'd say you've got yourself a bouquet. Take those poppies home because they're magic.

Anemones

The first anemones on the market always remind me that spring is near.

I found these long stem anemones yesterday at the Ferry Building farmers' market. For $3. I wanted to whisper in the farmer's ear, "You should raise the price. These are really, I mean really, nice."

This is what I love about anemones. The best time to buy them is when they are still curled up, closed, playing ugly ducking to the swans they will become. They are hardly worth a second look.

But then, after a few hours, a day, depending on temperature and freshness, they begin to reveal themselves. And that, the slight opening tease, is the beginning of the pleasure. They curl back up at night.

And they perform this dance every day; opening a bit further as time goes on, showing off the colors and patterns previously hidden, closing up less in the evening until they drop their petals all together.

The dropping of the petals is its own enjoyment though. They do it slowly. The anemones loose their petals like a strip of silk stockings, their naked black middles remaining on the stem. No less beautiful in my eyes.

And it's a sin to remove even a petal before they have made their final bow. Which they will do when they are done.

I can't let a year go by without them.