Oh, What a Beautiful Morning

We had an exceptional weekend here in the great city of Seattle, with temperatures up into the 80s. Gor. Geous. Despite the vagaries of a dismal, wet and over-long winter, the tulips bloomed and now, as they fade, everything else is in bud. The May air is soft. Even on the chill, overcast days of last week it portended the warmth that was coming and on the mottled wings of that warmth, fragrance lingers. It stops me. I can be engaged in the most mundane of tasks - taking my wastebasket to the recycling, going to the garage to get chicken breasts from the freezer - and the air commands me to stop. There is a general sweetness of miscellaneous bud and blossom, fruit trees, new grass, the last hyacinth and the first rose but the top note, unmistakably, is lilac.

Nearly everyone in this neighborhood has lilac bushes. Sometimes I imagine that there used to be one grand house here, owned by a lilac fanatic who planted swaths and swaths of them. I imagine how gorgeous May must have been in that house- windows opened to allow the spring air to clear away the last vestiges of winter from the corners. Those homeowners would have been very calm and happy people, smelling lilac all day. It is a healing fragrance.

I imagine, sometimes, that the house had to be taken down...unfortunate investments, a heir who was neglectful of the family legacy...and the land being sold off in tiny parcels to post-war developers who raised up all the little ranch houses and cottages that line the streets now. But this would have been the '50s after all; these plain little houses were built with care and the heart of the craftsman still informed both design and construction. I fancy those developers saw the lilacs and held back modernity just enough to plot the footprint of each house to accommodate the old lilac bushes, striving to keep at least one for each property.

That's not what happened. And in fact, the lilac on our land is one we planted ourselves. But from the back garden I can see lines of lilacs to the north and south and can't help but think they were here long before our houses were built.

After our splendid weekend of heat, the lilacs too are fading for the season. Summer flowers are coming on. The irises, which might otherwise have waited until June, have begun to pop open and the roses are loaded with buds. The blossoms of the apple stick are falling like snow and leaving behind tiny green apple babies. The bees did their work; there will be lots of applesauce cake this year.

I must away to gather rosebuds while I may and hang washing on the line.