Wild plums in bloom

The wild plums on the south border of our property are blooming. I can see them from the window as a spray of white against dark branches that are not yet hidden by leaves. Everywhere I drive now, I see wild plums in bloom, and it feels like I’m discovering secrets. I try to make mental notes of where they are, as if I were planning to go back and harvest them later, but I’m sure I won’t. I want to know where they are because wild plums are one of the ways the land laughs, and I want to hear that laughter.

The day we first found our wild plums was one of the most beautiful days of my life. Last summer, I walked along the south border of our property for no good reason on a day when the sky was thick with heavy gray clouds. There were some yellow flowers along the south fence line, mixed into in a thin border of grass between soybean fields. In that strange light before the rain, the flowers were orange lanterns that glowed from within. I went to them, and when I looked at the shrubs beside them, I saw the golden plums hanging down.

My husband and son were gone for the afternoon, so I went running barefoot through the soybeans and across our clover to find my daughter. She came to see them and she lit up, as one does in the presence of something amazing. Then the rain came. We ran to the garage and sat there on an old ragged loveseat while the rain drummed on the metal roof and sent its wonderful odor wafting through the wide open door. Kittens, which had been born in a garage before we moved in, came to sit on our laps and rub against our legs. As we talked and joked, part of me stood aside, full of sober wonder at the loveliness of my daughter.