I bought the hyacinth.  Everything else I cut from parking lot trees.

Twin crabapples by the abandoned bowling alley.  Apple tree behind the old Jamaican buffet that’s a yoga studio now. Lilacs in front of the shuttered Shopko.  (Not making any of this up.)

I couldn’t bring myself to cut even a twig off the stunted trunks of the transcendently incongruous white crab apples gracing the steel siding of the liquor store on my corner.  (Transcendent incongruity is not to be trifled with.)

We joke here in USDA Zone 4-ish about global warming working out for us.  But Summer came and took Spring away with 96 hours of bad August weather in mid-May.  The petals are everywhere – blown open in a terrible rush.  It’s as bad as a late frost.  You can’t re-set the time they needed to do their work.

So this is all of Spring that I could steal, crammed in one bowl.  Now let’s hope for rain.