An Hour Well Spent

In a free hour this afternoon I drive to the store on the back roads, heavy with blossoming fruit trees, to buy some oranges to zest for my bread, accompanying cardamom, pecans, and honey with “the essence of wild sage from the foothills of California.”

On the way back I stop at the community farm stand, wooden and hand-lettered, that offers honey too, and eggs; free seeds and an assortment of books—only the books in evidence today.

And now my kitchen smells brightly of zested orange.  The bread will do its thing all night while we’re sleeping, and be ready to bake in the morning.  Our dreams will be cardamom scented, and livened by a moment of freedom and simple joy like that in André Gide’s Amyntas (North African Journals) when the orange escapes—

“From the top of the Rue de la Casbah an orange begins rolling and bouncing; a little girl rushes after it; the orange escapes . . .  If some French boulevard did not stop them, both would tumble all the way down to the sea.”

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Oranges and Petals