The willow at the park turned chartreuse this past week. I had always thought the chartreuse was the leaves arriving. It is not. The chartreuse is the flowers — small catkins, slender, citrus-yellow — set against the first new leaves. Nothing on the tree is chartreuse on its own. The chartreuse is the two together. I noticed this on Monday. A tree will keep teaching you if you keep walking past it.
The fiddleheads are at the market this week. Wild-foraged, mostly, cut by hand at dawn before the ferns straighten up into the tall green fronds you will see all summer. I am grateful not to have missed them this May.
The fig tree that wintered in my living room is back on the terrace, almost three weeks out, its buds swollen and green and many. I brought it home last Mother's Day, a year ago today. Last summer it gave me a bounty of fragrant, velvety, dark purple, sweet figs — more than I could eat. The branches looked dead all winter. They were not.
The maples outside the kitchen windows have leafed in. The bright light of winter is gone, replaced by green and dappled. Nanouk, my husky mutt, is almost done shedding her winter coat — thank god!
I went to the greenhouse on Tuesday for the year's herbs. The air had weight to it — the way air does when it is holding the scent of fifty kinds of herbs at once. I went for the mints first. Pear mint, with its huge velvety leaves. Pineapple mint, so pretty with its variegated leaves. Chocolate mint, which actually smells like peppermint patties. A few others, because there is no such thing as too many mints. Pineapple sage too, for the way it tastes in tea and because the hummingbirds have come to expect it. Then a whole flat of basil. I could not resist running my hand through the young plants, and as the scent rose I was brought back to last September — the smell of the whole house as the basil was pureed with olive oil and pumpkin seeds, and the kind of parmesan that should come with a deed. Twenty-one jars on the counter before going to the freezer. Some of which go to my youngest daughter, who apparently cannot live without homemade pesto. I drove home with the year's future crops in the back of the car.
This is what the Letter will be. A Sunday note from inside the week it lands in. Saisons is for the practice of intentional living — the authentic life, not the staged one. Less kept, but kept well. Your spring is probably running ahead of mine, or behind. The timing is mine. The skill is anyone's.
This Sunday is also Mother's Day. The lemon pound cake is on the counter — made yesterday, always better the second day. The chickens will go in the oven at four, served with fiddleheads cooked in butter, and last summer's garlic from a friend who had more than she could use and gave me a share. My children will be here. There will be more food than is wise.
Next Sunday the willow will be green. The hummingbirds will arrive. The fig will leaf. There will be another Letter.
— Catherine