My older sister’s birthday was last week, and she gave herself what she calls a ME day.  A perfectly delightful concept, and endlessly adaptable to the whims of the owner of said day.  Her day included, among other things,  lunch with a friend and a massage.

Sundays are almost always lazy, wonderful days for me, by design.  I take the whole “day of rest” thing pretty seriously. But this Sunday, with my agenda clear, I thought I’d take my sister’s wise example to heart and really have a ME day.  The events of my day included, but were not limited to: sleeping very late, completely ignoring the dire state of affairs in my garden, reading on the couch with the cat, cruising the discount stores searching (in vain) for ridiculously marked-down Le Creuset cookware and instead coming home with the girliest cream puff confection of an apron ever.  The kind of apron that makes one break into song and twirl around the kitchen with bluebirds perched on extended fingers.

After which, I wandered down to the neighborhood farmer’s market.  Unlike the big grand-daddy  UW Farmer’s Market which is open all year, the homey little local Lake Forest Park Farmer’s Market sprouts up in spring like a mushroom, in the parking lot of a shopping center.  And unlike my usual Saturday morning trip to the farmer’s market, wherein I compete for parking, rush around to get everything on my list, and high-tail it out of there to my next stop, this Sunday I was in no hurry at all.  And the parking was plentiful.

The sun was shining, albeit intermittently.  I strolled around, looking at everything, sampling fruit and jams and cheeses, and engaging the cheese vendor in a conversation about the crucial importance of freshness in curds, and the joys of eating newly made curds, still warm and damp.  I ran into a friend and chatted while standing around in the sun outside a produce stand.

I did have an object in mind when I set out for the market–fingerling potatoes for the Chicken in Riesling I planned to make for dinner.  I found a bounty of options,and  finally selected a bag of beautiful yellow potatoes that really did look just like the fat knuckly fingers of the quintessential English giant from a fairy tale.

I also tucked some raspberry jam into my bag, made by the same family that grew the fruit.  They also offered frozen raspberries and blueberries now, and promised fresh strawberries in a couple of weeks.

I was brought to a complete standstill in front of one of the flower vendors, amazed by the size and deep, saturated colors of their poppies.  I watched as they selected flowers from various buckets, melding them into giant bouquets wrapped in butcher’s paper, stems in a bag of water, all secured tightly with rubber bands. I gazed into the flowers, contemplating the merits of red poppies vs. salmon colored, noticing irises, lilies, all sorts of showy beauty. I finally chose the biggest, brightest, gaudiest, bouquet I could find, and paid my ten dollars.  I wandered off with my market bag over my shoulder, and flowers cradled in the crook of my arm, humming the tune to “Wouldn’t it be Loverly”.

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