I knew it was too good to last. This morning, the alarm woke me before my brain could. Still two days in a row isn’t bad. And it let me reserve my round of morning profanity for today’s alarm clock. I have one of those fit bit things I am using for sleep tracking at the moment. I checked it and I didn’t drift into deep sleep until well after 4 am so that’s what the alarm woke me out of. Apparently I can dip in and out of light sleep all night and only hit good deep sleep when it is time for my alarm to call me from my bed. Maybe that’s why I fight with the alarm so much. Sorry I am talking about sleep so much this week, I just started monitoring it and am finding it a strange new world. It also has made me take notes on a story revolving around lucid dreaming but that is for another time. For now,,,timers set and let’s get writing.
Wednesday, March 27th: The air smelled of cherry blossoms.
The air smelled of cherry blossoms. From where we stood, the scent was delicate, dancing lightly on the breeze and somehow blending well with the earthier scent of the woods on the other side of the road. It was green with a hint of sweetness and I inhaled deeply.
Then we moved towards the scent. Others found it intoxicating and enjoyed the scent as it increased. I very quickly found it cloying. I also found it pointless. ‘Or at least momentarily pointless for us,’ I thought.
Stephanie wanted to go cherry picking. It was early spring and as the scent proclaimed, the flowers or the cherry trees were just blooming. They were blooming wildly, madly even. But there was no fruit. There wouldn’t be for a while.
This was a fact of nature and one I tried many times to explain. Cherry blossoms lead to cherries. They don’t indicate that cherries are lurking. Still Stephanie was of the ‘of you believe it hard enough then it will become true’ school of thought. She smelled cherry blossoms and visualized cherries, therefore there would be cherries.
We were on the wide dirt path that led deep into the heard of the cherry orchard. More strictly speaking there were several orchards. Several different family owned orchards in the area making it several different properties, even if the vast swath of pink petalled trees made it look like one large sea of cherry trees.
Off to the left I saw my friend Wendy. She was frowning and looking towards one of the houses in the distance.
“You guys go on ahead,’ I told Stephanie and the others. My head was already beginning to pound from the overly saturated air. “I’ll catch up.”
I received a dismissive wave as they continued on to find the stand that in season sold baskets for picking your own in the orchards. I veered off to move towards Wendy.
“Wendy,” I called. She turned at the sound of her voice and she smiled and waved.
“Well, aren’t you a surprise,” she said as I joined her. “What are you doing all the way out here?”
“Stephanie and her friends wanted to pick cherries. I was dragooned into driving them.”
Wendy frowned. “Cherries?
I sighed and shook my head. “I told them it was too early, but Stephanie disagreed.”
Wendy chuckled. “Let me guess, she visualized and it manifested?”
“Something like that.”
We both looked at the trees. “Well,” Wendy said. “If she’s managed to get an entire orchard to produce fruit early with just her will power I’m sure someone will hire her. Then they could beat the other growers to market.”
“It would let them beat those that are shipped in,” I said. “I think she saw some of the first early cherries to ht the store and assumed if they were growing elsewhere and we had cherry trees nearby then they would be growing here.”
“Sort of logical I suppose,” Wendy said. “She’s heading in to the Tomlinson stand?”
“I think so, why?”
“Marcia’s in a bit of a mood today. Either this will lighten it and she’ll laugh at Stephanie and her friends improving her mood or…”
There was a screeching from down the path. It sounded like someone was being skinned alive.
“Or she’ll turn the hose on them,” Wendy finished.
Ten til Midnight 