Spring in Bloom

The ground goes dark before anything else happens. Fields that spent winter pale and matted go the color of strong coffee after the first real rain, and the farms start moving almost immediately. Horses and Deeres through soil that has been worked by the same families for generations. The smell off those fields is thick and potent and not for everyone. Turned earth and something underneath that, older, mineral, the ground opening back up after months of being closed.

Then the green comes. Not one particular shade of green but a multitude of hues. The winter wheat is already up and bright. Pastures filling in. The tree lines along the edges of fields going from grey to yellow-green to something deeper within the span of a few weeks. The light changes with it. May light in Lancaster has a particular quality, low and gold in the morning, the kind that makes ordinary fields look like they're being lit from underneath.

The roadside stands and for sale signs appear quietly. Asparagus to mark the start, paired with last of the season sunchokes. What was dormant all winter starts appearing again, a little at a time, then all at once. The air at a farmer’s market in May carries cut flowers and fresh bread and something earthy still clinging to the vegetables that came out of the ground that morning. The smell of Lancaster in the spring is rain and soil and something floral underneath, the whole county seeming to exhale at once.

-Paul