Kathryn Nicolai

Take a deep breath in through your nose.

Let it out your mouth.

Nice.

One more.

Breathe in.

And out.

I took one more look around to assure myself of that.

Yeah, we were ready.

I'd been up early before the dew had dried on the grass or the chill had left the air.

to clip buckets and buckets full of lilac stems for today.

Me and my small crew of volunteers had snipped for more than an hour, but still hadn't emptied the bushes that grew all over the patch of land surrounding my farmhouse.

there were still more sweet-smelling, mostly purple blooms for the folks that stopped to pick them in the next week or so before they were gone for another year.

I say mostly purple because since I'd become the steward of the lilacs, I'd planted many new varieties.

including yellow and rose-red ones.

and with just a bit of green and citrus.

The van ride on our way to the market had been so fragrant, I could still smell the flowers on my skin and sweatshirt.

We'd buckled all the pails into the cargo space, settled in around the boxes of donated vases,

and slowly and carefully bumped our way into town.

The market is a long, low building on the edge of downtown.

Half of it is an open air space, banks of wooden stalls with spaces behind them where sellers could pull up and unload their wares.