Don't wake the lilacs

 

Clearly, this is not now. This is then. May, when nights are stretching the day all the way into bright June. Lilacs gathered from an abandoned homestead in the Catskills. A gin and tonic with lime leaves and strawberries. 

I must show this picture to our bedroom citrus flock, and whisper, "Two, more, months." This last stretch indoors is always the most problematic. The Meyer lemon has aphids on its flowers. That's a first. The black pepper vine (that turns out not to be a black pepper vine, but a betel, despite being sold as such by the grower) produced a mealy bug, which must have friends. The galangal has spider mite, and will be showered again, today. The yuzu has dropped some leaves but has a dozen fat buds.

For now the stone table on the terrace is the meeting-place only of mockingbirds, who come to eat fruit salad there every cold morning. A small dish of chopped fruit. This morning it was tiny cubes of apple and three raspberries. 

We may meet these lilacs again, in a green season. Now, they are covered in ice in the field in the old mountains, and fast asleep.

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