Nature's Table

Blueberry season is peaking here, so we went to the farm in the morning and picked and picked (and ate) and picked. We picked up a batch of Florida (!) peaches as well. "There are peaches that grow in Florida?" I asked, eyeing the little globes... about half the size of a commercial peach. "There are," the farmer said. "This strain was bred for Florida in particular, and we grow them right here across the street."

They were sweet, sweet, sweet. Bright yellow flesh. Tiny but delicious.

Commercial blackberries won't be ready until June/July, which is when we can pick them at the farm off the tame vines there with their smooth, thornless limbs. But in the park today we found a double handful of ripe wild blackberries, and paid in blood for our noms. They were still delicious. Probably more delicious, because we worked so hard for them; we had berry juice flowing through the lines of our scratches. I put the ones we found in our paper water cup and we snacked as we walked. Wild blackberries are smaller, with smaller seeds, less water and more flavor. The sweet ones taste like the wind in the air and the smell of palms and moss and oaks. The tart ones punch you in the roof of the mouth, but eating them you can sense all the good things in them that your body craves.

While outside we saw birbs of all kinds, including a swallowtail kite close enough to see the tucked up legs. There were chirping ospreys and black vultures and all sorts of tinier birds, harder to see but present: at least one set of cardinals thipping, and certainly mockingbirds and jays. Many bugs: bees aplenty, and damsel- and dragonflies, moths bronzed in the summer sun, and butterflies: zebra longwings, which flutter as if being flapped by marionette strings, unlikely and lovely; the common gulf fritillary, often mistaken for monarchs; and two actual monarchs, rarely seen around here, migratory and so not a constant.

It is a gorgeous day out, the weather an unlikely 70 degrees when we woke up, with a strong breeze. This is February weather, not May, so we enjoyed it before the sun got hot in the afternoon. Walking through the park, staring at the shadows of birds skimming the path in front of me, I kept repeating, 'I will not decide NOW IS THE TIME to write the faerie farmer story.'

But it was in my mind.

Anyway. There's a bowl of blueberries with cream waiting for my spoon...