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| Downtown Farmer's Market |
I was, by mistake, an hour early for my hair appointment downtown this morning. As this was a Saturday, I walked over to the Farmer's Market just a few blocks away. We haven't been back to the market since last summer and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. The Farmer's Market in Bloomington is without doubt a favorite place for locals to hang out on Saturday mornings, and it's the first thing all newcomers are made acquainted with. Locally grown, organic vegetable and dairy products seem to be de riguer and the local Co-op, BloomingFood, is the grocery store of choice for most academics here. In addition to the hippie farmers, we also have traditional Amish family farmers nearby. The little Amish girls with their demur bonnets and pinafores sitting behind the stalls are adorable. They seem to take the people and things around them quite comme ils faut, however at odds they may appear with their own life style.
Another quirky thing about the food sources here is the irregular Tuesday gathering of people in a corner of the Co-op's parking lot. It's a bit mysterious if you are not in on the secret cult. These are "friends" of Fabian who receive e-mail notification from him a couple of days before he is expected in town. He (I'm not at all certain that Fabian is a real person) and his crew apparently drive a refrigerated truck all the way here from Galveston,Texas, bringing fresh shrimp, oysters, crab meat, and red snapper, etc., to the poor land-bound folks along the way. Even though his e-mails always say that the truck will be in the parking lot at 2 p.m. on a certain Tuesday, the faithful here don't take any chances and generally start queuing up at noon. You are out of luck if you happen to be the next in line when what you want is sold out. People stock up on fresh seafood and try to make it last until the next time Fabian is back in town, which, unfortunately, follows an occult schedule of its own and is not predictable. As the shrimp boats don't operate in the winter time, we don't see Fabian from mid November to mid April. It was a long, lean, five-month period without shrimp! The line was twice as long when the truck showed up on 4/19/11, the first time this year.
All the preamble above was but a prelude to my confession - after giving all the aisles at the Farmer's Market a once over, I ended up carrying a tray of blooming annuals to my car! I must also confess that I have previously scouted out a couple of spots in the front yard that can use some colors. The power of instant gratification is irresistible!
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| At the market |
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| Transplanted |
4 comments:
I just discovered that the comment section on my blog was deactivated for some unknown reason since mid May. I just changed some settings and hope it will work now. Please feel free to leave comments on my posts. Thanks.
Finally, I am able to leave a comment again! I thought I was something I had said.
Ah, instant gratification. I am sure that there is much to be said for getting your gratification only after much hard work, but at the moment I can't quite recall what it is. It must be something like waiting all winter for spring finally to come. I keep thinking the spring would be even better if it just came the day after a white Christmas, so we'd have the sense of the winter season, but not have to keep mucking with the snow through January, February and March, and then the cold winds and rain of April, and May with a shy smile of warmth finally, and a bloom on her cheeks. If I could buy May in December at the farmers market, I would do it too.
I must have written the above comment in my sleep for I don't remember doing it. Fancy getting an e-mail notification about one's dream! Hmmm...
That was you channeling me on a dream. --Kirk
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