Cherry Blossom Rain

There are few things as ethereal as the moment an April breeze tickles through a cherry tree branch, sending a shower of petals through the air. If you are lucky enough to be standing in that rain, left with petals in your hair, you can't help be in the moment. This photo is from a tree just over our back fence. It is currently filling our yard with little points of white, and in a couple of months will be heavy with dark, sweet cherries.

When we lived in DC, a perfect Spring day would come, and you'd go to the Jefferson Monument and walk around the tidal basin (preferably with a chicken-salad-on-croissants picnic, but that's just me) kicking through the pink petals, and taking photos through the blossoms of the water and the pedal boats and the monuments and each other. And you'd know that winter was gone.

Once, also in DC, I did a charity walk. The prior day we'd done 26 miles. This day I was on mile 12 or so, near finishing and walking through Georgetown. The entire street was lined with apple trees (I think. They were larger flowers than cherry-trees, but I am no expert.) and the sidewalk was completely covered. No gray concrete. Just pinkish-white flowers. Despite the blisters on the soles of my feet and my nearness to being done, I just wanted to be still in that scene and never lose it.

I was thinking recently about apple trees. Well, about apples. Have you ever eaten an apple straight from the tree? I mean picked it, stood under its branches and eaten that unwashed apple. I've only had that experience a couple of times in my life. Most of my apples come from the supermarket, sorted for perfection, rinsed, waxed, and trucked to me. But those few apples under a tree, with their blemishes and their odd shapes are the perfection of taste, of texture, of crunch.

Me? I'd much rather be a blemished, imperfectly-shaped apple hanging in the sun than a waxed and polished, perfect-in-appearance, mealy, bland-tasting apple sitting in a bin of other perfectly-shaped apples waiting to be picked up. (Well played, Metaphor. Well played.)

Love to all my imperfectly perfect apples - Val