the season of falling plum petals

I’m sitting underneath the plum tree that arcs across our backyard. It is festooned with tiny flowers, and with each gentle nudge from the wind, a few of them flutter down to the ground. It’s the season of falling petals, a season that lasts not three months but a few days. Yet I do mark it, each and every year, this beautiful moment of snow out of blue sky.

I love that the petals land with perfect randomness on the ground. I love that each petal is nothing special—just an oval of white, a pinkie nail of a thing. I love that this season of falling marks a beginning, not an end, that what will be left will be a green tree, ready to receive longer days. I love watching the bees, the regular drones just getting through the workday, and the thicc round buzzy ones, who never seem to land on the flowers, but draw their patterns in air until a friend comes by and they spiral off together into some unknown, short-lived adventure. When the garbage trucks go silent and my own brain goes quiet, I can hear the tree buzzing with life, sounding strangely like a far-off sideshow or a memory of a grand prix race.

A passionflower that I tried to bend to my will against some posts escaped my intention and climbed up into the plum tree. I don’t have the heart not to let it reach as high as it can go. Occasionally I spot a hot pink flower way up there and it’s like hearing some great news about an old friend you’ve lost touch with. (“Wow, good for them! Did not know they were up to that.”)

I need to take better care of this tree, eliminate its watersprouts, uncross its branches with the saw. But instead I’m just here inside this California snow globe, dog panting on the brick, succulents flowering haphazardly in the planters at my feet, a nuthatch happening by to say cheep. I ran the LA Marathon this weekend, dragging myself to a big personal best, but I am tired now, and my hamstring is healing, and nature is healing, and it is time to be a thicc bee spiraling off in weird directions.

CLIPPINGS

• AN EVENT! There will be Oakland Garden Club panel at this rad Oakland festival—TOWN LIFE—on April 20th. More details on the panel itself shortly—but the theme will be SEEDS.

• Nicole Lavelle is going to be giving a talk in Bolinas: “a visual lecture about Win Ng and various other tendrils of Bay Area design culture and art history. My friend Kathleen O’Neill (KO) will be presenting on her time as a graphic designer at Coevolution Quarterly in the 1980s and 1990s.” SO COOL.

• There is a new reading series at Clio’s bookstore & bar called Secret Nook. OGC favorite and Heyday editor Marthine Satris will be one of the featured writers. They are secret.nook on Instagram.

• I have not forgotten about the Soviet pomegranates! I promise there is a draft on the way, but I needed to mark this moment while I figure out exactly why I cannot press send on that other edition and its Leningrad-level intensity.