Green Woods

The annual leek gathering has been occurring for twelve years, give or take an annum.  If there was a human who ever reminded me of a fairy, my friend is one; many of my friends could be fey, thus explaining a certain tilt of head and scrutinizing look.  I am surrounded by myth in endomorphic ectomorphic mesomorphic disguise.  Yes, I mean you.  Here is Karima, another.

We connect in May, when dormant earth warms, and rotting logs sprout with mushrooms, seedlings, roly-poly bugs, and moss.  Like a dog who has caught a scent,the floor of the earth has a solitary purpose; alert, respond, produce.  Millions of green living beings push through layers of last year's leaves, between braided tree roots, crowding aside shale and limestone, blanketing the brown alluvium with shoots vibrating like a plucked string.  An orchestra of trout lilies, trillium, ferns, solemn jack in the pulpit, wild geranium, pincushion moss, the umbrellas of mayapples, all are crowned with new, tender leaves of the rising trees.  You almost hear the sounds created by shoving, expanding, unfolding.  Amid this visual cacophony stand wide blades of the leeks, our purpose.  

It was a chill day, both women had bundled their own gathering equipment, and we headed southeast, to where bluebirds still lived.  On the way, my friend spied a lovely cement urn, something you could easily put atop grandma when she goes, it was ornate and sitting at the end of a driveway.  Large garbage day in the country brings many good things; the fairy hauled in two plastic lanterns, a substantial door mat, buckets, and lots of other plant pots.  She stuffed the car with the loot, merely desiring the urn for her enchanted backyard garden back in the city.  I benefited from just being there.

Traveling on, us yipping merrily over the finds, she did it again.  Look.  Alpaca.  Llamas?  Do they have yarn?  We turned about again and visited Flamingo Art Studios, who have a small herd of alpaca not llamas in the back.  They had just been sheared, and a mill was turning their shorn coats into yarn, coming soon.  The owners were delightful, and had not only their own art, but that of many local artists besides.  We each bought a treasure, I a small syrup pitcher, and she a stitch ripper and honey, maybe feeling we owed the local economy something after snagging free treasure from unsuspecting driveways.

We arrived at the familiar place, and followed the road to where the leeks grow; they are bound by a ridge, a dried creekbed, and the road.  Violets and trillium tumbled over the ground, pale green jacks stood in their pulpits before inattentive congregations.  It was so good to breathe in the air; cleared and refreshed by burgeoning plant life.

Karima had her traditional garden shovel, I had my mother's old hand held garden fork; we separated, each looking for ready-to-dig specimens, or patches of larger leaves, indicating older growth.  Some of the growing leeks are yellowing already, signaling their season's end, some lives are so fleeting.  Snowdrops have come and gone, daffodils are waning, yet tulips are at their apex.  If the weather stays cool, the leeks will be there another two weeks.  The rains have softened the ground, making the digging easier--the garden fork only has to loosen clumps, which allows a short pull to release the bulb.  Shake off the dark soil  and dead leaves from last year, and put it in the bucket.

Just minutes of digging, and our containers are full, the garlicky onion green aroma ascending through the woods; she trotted off to the car, while I snapped a few photos of trillium and immense tree trunks.  Tripping lightly over briars, I spied a rubbery appearing lump about the size of a baseball growing above the forest carpet.  Examining the lump revealed it to be a false morel, Gyromitra esculenta, which on a bad day can kill you; the thing contains gyromitrin, which becomes monomethylhydrazine upon ingestion.  It was wonderfully huge, as if Rumplestilskin was escaping from his earthly trap, his bulbous, wrinkled brown nose breaking ground first.  I had never seen this variety of Gyromitra before.  Didn't touch it, I know better than to mess with strange mushrooms in the woods.

The car now was leekful, planterful, stuffed, and thankful; birdseed was tossed into the grass as a small offering for what the woods gave us once again.  Arriving back in the city, people were out walking dogs, tending yards, smiling as green spring cut loose after prying away the cold grip of a northern winter.  At home, I put the leeks into the bathtub for a rinse, then tended to dislodging dead dead dead curly spiders from the plastic lanterns.  The lamps don't look bad at all, and will be put in the building's hallway by the window.  If they get stolen, so what--they were free; one is sitting next to a philodendron.

I had put plants out in the common area of our floor, it looks institutional otherwise; six fabric tulips have overnight become five.  One of the red ones was taken, and it temporarily vexed me but then I vexed myself for crabbing about it.  Stealing is wrong, I had huffed, why should I bother decorating the hall if the denizens are helping themselves?  Pain!  Time!  Expense!  But think, Susan.  Why would someone take a fake flower?  Maybe a child for this Sunday, Mother's Day.  Maybe a grown being for themselves.  Looking at them lifts me up, perhaps someone else needed lifting up too, and will smile when they see the flower.  Who knows, but I hope whoever is enjoying it doesn't take more.  I will set the cats on them.

Swallows are darting on hairpin turns midair, catching bugs.  A brown ragdoll cat is on my lap, a white Volkswagen is washing it's paws next to me; Lulu is up in the cat tree, and the orange cat is god knows where.  The day is ebbing towards night, a cloud cover obscures clear sky; I still ache from digging and hauling, and a pot is full of chopped leeks sauteing in butter for potato soup tomorrow.  Change in seasons, changes in lives, never an easy metamorphosis, but it happens all the time; it's supposed to.  Tuck under the covers, there's a spring chill to take you into the furthest depths of sleep, where wild leeks grow and mushrooms wrinkled as an ancient face live.  Let Nod sort you out; fall, fall, sweet stranger.