Spring has been a very long time coming in this town. All of April was cold, cloudy, snowy, rainy, generally miserable. We’re well into May and it’s not much better yet. We had torrential rain today followed by one of those exasperating beautiful and weird sunsets that consist of a brilliant strip of sky at the edge of a heavy dark sky. Clearing up just in time for night! 

I went out for a walk and ended up in the grocery store. I was buying limes for a yoghurt cake I plan on making tomorrow. Three teenage boys come to my house quite often and cake must always be in the house. Spring flowers were on display. There were some spectacular hyacinths carrying their heavy scent out over the flower pots and garden ornaments. An employee hurried by and saw me admiring them although daffodils are my favorites. For me that scent of sap, of Spring enchants me even more than the drowning perfume of the pink and blue hyacinths. 

She stopped for a moment, sharing the wonder with me, touching the tiny bells on their firm stems. “Look, they’re so perfect. They look like they’re  plastic, right? They’re perfect enough to be fake, eh?” And so we stopped sharing and I went away from the flower stand.

This is what is in my garden now. Growing out of the dead leaves of last year, through the ugly fence. So wonderful in their neglected blooming, so domestic and uncared for. 

They say we might have a little sun tomorrow. Oh, and on the way home two of the three boys were on the other side of the wide mains street, calling and calling , ” Granny, Granny” and they were’nt even my grand-kids! So that was my consolation.