Come Pick Flowers With Me

Every April I commit to wildflower surveillance. It started the year we moved to the farm and a sea of wild violets enveloped the farmhouse. In my nervous anticipation of our tractor delivery, chomping at the bit to break ground before the season would get on its merry way with or without us, I had to busy myself. If you've never seen it, violets growing in such abundance almost appear to be an illusion, radiant in their ultraviolet profusion, optically incredible.

My apprehensive mind begged for a distraction from the mental baggage that comes with embarking on full-time entrepreneurship. I recalled the year when we were farmhands with less responsibility, when I toyed around with jelly-making. I strapped 1-year old baby May to my back, grabbed a basket and dove straight into a plush carpet of violets. Some would call picking petite violets tedious, but to me it was the catharsis I sought. I quickly found that rather than plucking each flower with your forefinger and thumb as you're inclined to do, if you scoop a tuft of violets and grass between your fingers, sliding your way up the blades, hugging your fingers together, a clump of violet blossoms pop off their stems all at once into your hand. After about 45 minutes of walking the farm, visiting the thickest patches of violets and filling my basket, there are enough violets to make jelly for a whole season of market, plus extras to serve as 'thank you's'and Christmas gifts. Back then with May in infancy, it may have taken us an hour or more to stop to nurse at the base of a tree or to free her to crawl alongside me.

Apparetnly, our kids have been fully indoctrinated. This year, May noticed the violet flush before me. I am letting my guard down a little bit with each spring. The jelly-making tradition is now more of a welcome rainy day therapeutic project that I enjoy with multiple refills of my mug of coffee, than a busy body's treatment for restlessness. Last Saturday after my return from town delivering the week's orders of our produce and baked goods, May handed me a paper bag and asked if we could pick together. Jack burst out of the farmhouse, asking for a bag too and we traversed the acreage for over an hour, our bags growing heavy. We found a trove in the woods which we could hardly traverse without treading on the lush purple abundance. Harbored from the cool spring wind, Jack found a fallen tree to monkey on while May and I chatted about first grade dynamics and talent show preparation. Inevitably, our outdoor work is delightfully distracting in its discoveries of the natural world...Jack called us to see the "special design" on his log, a sapsucker's tedious trail of holes drilled in search of their sweet loot. May noticed the black cap raspberry canes which grow wild here were putting on flower heads, weeks earlier than usual.

While the kids peeled off their outerwear layers in the living room, I boiled the water to steep the violets and to capture this moment of spring: it's flavor, its tantalizing floral scent and that phantasmic color. The violet tea, with a touch of lemon juice to accentuate the flower's flavor, sugar to sweeten and preserve the jelly, and apple pectin to condense the violet essence into a loaf of sourdough's best complement. As the jelly boils and the canning pot steams, I remember that I too need to peel off my outerwear layers. And it's another round of Rich's coffee roasted last weekend in our barn. Ladled into quilted glass jars, it seems we've achieved it again: we've bottled this special chapter of spring in a jar. And when we are deep into summer, overwhelmed by the heat, the grass starting to give way to drought, we pop open another jar of violet jelly to remind ourselves of the euphoria of lush, crisp, green spring. And in the winter, if we've planned well, we will warm ourselves with Rich's sourdough toast and another slather of jelly to encourage us with the taste of what's to come on our tongues.

With the passing of the violets, comes the mass blooming of our apple trees. Apple blossom jelly is next on the docket. And this week I might just lean into the antidotal effect of the process, to calm my mind and to soothe the woes of a tough week. The abundance of creamy, velvet flowers waiting to be picked are just what the doctor ordered.

Thank you for reading :).

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