postcard 24: strawberries and mimosas

lazy spring weekends

The market is exploding in yellow flowers. Live music is amplified through a set of speakers and there are twice as many vendors as a normal winter day this Saturday morning. Later I’ll learn that the flowers are mimosas, southern Europe’s first harbinger of spring, inspiring villages across the continent to hold festivals to celebrate their arrival. I leave Topher and Hazelnut on the fringe and duck in and out, buying cabbage and lettuce, peppers and garlic. I look longingly at the perfect citrus, but I’ve still got pounds of it at home from last weekend’s roadside purchase. We’ve made mandarin caprese and fruit salad, pulled pork marinated in the sweet juice and before you suggest jam, there’s also a jar of that in the fridge, awaiting a fresh loaf of bread. The woman at the very end of the market has bright baskets of strawberries and I can’t resist. I try to pay for one and she tells me 5 euros, but then yells at her husband to come adjust my container. They bicker for ten solid minutes, fiddling with the scale and precariously piling dozens more strawberries on top of my basket. I end up with twice as many berries as I picked up and I can tell it’s going to be a sweet summer.

Topher mixes cookie dough and I shape bagels and only the former turns out, but spending the afternoon baking with the windows open is lovely.

Google Maps tells us the route that avoids tolls will only take an extra five minutes but we inch along the windy back roads per usual, heading inland and climbing hills through tiny villages until we get to the church All Trails mentioned. The village is empty, aside from a pasture filled with lambs and their mothers and a lazy guard dog. We follow the GPS down the road and behind a transformer station, spotting a faded trail marker spray painted on a tree. The overgrown path descends straight down a steep slope into the gorge and so we begin our outing. It’s slippery and muddy and we’ve only come to the first creek crossing when Topher goes down hard. Hazelnut is in heaven, zooming back and forth across the creek and dragging us through the slippery patches. The provencal oak forest has given way to a veritable jungle, with mossy trees and wildflowers blooming. At the next slope I go down in the mud and then Topher grabs a stinging bush for balance and gets a hand full of spines. It’s only been half a mile but we call it and scramble back uphill on all fours, sliding backwards half a step for every one we take forward. On the way back I spot a side path we’d missed and find the first set of waterfalls we had come to see. They’re breathtaking cascades, hidden deep within the gorge. I take Hazelnut off leash to splash in the pool and she immediately starts zooming around in circles. She crashes through the forest and climbs the slope next to the falls, slipping on the turn and nearly yeeting it twenty feet off a cliff. Topher pulls me away from a tree moments before a huge spider drops down on my head and maybe there’s a reason we’re the only ones down here, we decide, as we emerge back into the village. The parking lot has filled and the sound of hymns comes from the open doors of the church. We take the highway back and stop for a coffee in the sun overlooking the marina, covered in drying mud.

We’ve run out of olive oil so we diverge from our normal before work routine and head north up the coast. The sky is threatening rain so we hustle to the beach and walk along the water, exploring a new stretch of seashore. Poor Hazelnut hasn't made any friends since we’ve been here, other than our American buddies’ elderly Visla, and she squeaks with excitement every time she sees a new prospect. Whether it’s our lack of Croatian language skills or Croatians’ lack of spay and neutering, we usually get waved off when we say she’s a girl. Today though, she says hello to a chunky shepherd whose mom speaks English and soon the two of them are playing chase. Hazelnut hugs her new friend’s mom in delight and gets all the treats from her purse. I realize too late that we should’ve gotten her number, so now we’re doomed to repeat the same walk over and over until we see them again. On the drive home the sky starts spitting fat raindrops and we duck into the store of our favorite olive oil farm and buy two bottles.

I sent my last magazine of the season off to the printer this week and I’ve officially completed two seasons as editor in chief. I’m taking a much overdue week off and we’re headed north to find the last dregs of winter, with any luck.

-Mikaela