Friday Ramble - Sweet

And so it goes . . . One day, the old crabapple is bare and forlorn, the next day it wears a multitude of tiny leaves. Almost overnight, the tree is covered with blooms and buzzing with throngs of ecstatic, blissed-out bumbles, bees and wasps.

Along comes an early summer breeze, and the crabapple symphony is over, petals drifting through the air like confetti, coming to rest on lawns and hedges and gardens, on fences and birdbaths and pergolas and fountains. The fallen bits of pink float merrily on puddles in the street and flutter across cobblestones in the village like tiny, airborne scraps of vibrantly hued carnival paper. Their presence conveys a festive aspect to the day, and seeing them on our morning walks makes us smile.

Our word traces its roots all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root form *swād- meaning sweet or pleasant, also the likely source of Old English, Germanic, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin words meaning the same thing.

Lilacs in the village are blooming, and when I stepped outside with Beau last evening around ten, the night air was full of their heady fragrance. For a few minutes, we leaned against the railing on the veranda and breathed in the glorious perfume. Then we were driven indoors by clouds of ravenous mosquitoes. The little blighters were out for blood and no mistake.

Standing out in the darkness, I remembered a long ago garden I planted with purple heliotrope. The color of the blooms was gorgeous, and their sweet, cherry-like scent pulled in hummingbirds, butterflies, bumbles and bees from miles around. The stuff was almost indecently sumptuous, and I shall have to plant it again.

How sweet this season is, how fleeting and poignant, just a little sad too. I sometimes wish that summer lasted a little longer this far north, but if it did, spring and autumn would be truncated slightly. No to that!