One recent morning, I came out of the house and everything was wet. It had rained all night, knock-knock on the tin roof, it had just stopped. The weather was gray, the air humid. The portrait was not the typical spring portrait. However, it couldn’t be more spring.
On the sidewalks, on the edges of the street, the pollen from the trees reminded us of a thin layer of green snow, and the tulips in the neighbors’ flowerbeds were in full bloom.
That morning, going to get coffee, it was like walking through Miron’s poem1in “the softness of the depths of the breezes in May”.
Here is a clear opinion (this will be the only one you will read in this column, I am an opinion holiday): I do not like any season as I love spring, I do not love any month as I love the month of may.
And I forgot to tell you that that morning, the whole neighborhood smelled of lilac (I imagine, no, I hope it’s the same thing in your area). It seems like the whole town smells of lilac.
Since that morning, I notice it all the time and I take advantage of it, because, as they say, it will only last as long as the flowers: it smells of lilac everywhere.
Hey, earlier, I was coming back to the house in a BIXI and it smelled of lilac, everywhere, along Laurier. In front of Laurier Park, it no longer smelled of lilac, but we were in another horticultural section: it smelled of jar.
So I love no month like I love the month of May. If I absolutely had to choose, I would die in May: dying while the trees are reborn, can we hope for a better month to die?
At the beginning of May, you can almost see their buds emerging. They are naked, you think they will never open, April hangs on, endless, stubborn and then, poof, the time to get out the patio kit, they explode and the crowns of leaves form arches above from our heads, as if the trees were holding hands from one side of the streets to the other.
PHOTO ARMAND TROTTIER, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The “Josée” lilac produces pink flowers.
At the beginning of May, in my yard, the Saskatoon berry exploded with a thousand starry flowers. Even on the disjointed branch that I will soon have to cut, because it was cut down by a windstorm last winter. I’m going to sound like a QS activist writing an open letter to speak on behalf of the People, but there is an image of life in this broken branch that flourishes despite everything.
I come back to lilacs. The other day, on Facebook, an author I know, Mme Claudia Larochelle did what she does every spring: she expressed her love of lilacs and she confessed to a compulsion, that of grabbing lilac flowers in her hood. I quote her: “Here has come that time of year when I go out in secret at dusk, camouflaged in my curtains, armed with a scissor with well-sharpened blades…”
And under these 29 words, a photo of lilacs.
In the discussion thread, everyone started talking about the beauty of lilacs, about their smell which reminds us that spring is coming.
Everyone, except a lady who intervened armed with the Criminal Code by describing M’s actionsme Larochelle as nothing less than theft, lambasting everyone who dared to applaud Mme Larochelle. The lady commented as if it was a child kidnapping…
Responses, counter-responses, passive-aggressive bullshit: the collective conversation began to frantically search for the bottom of the barrel.
What do I think about people who cut off one or two pieces of lilac branches that aren’t theirs?
Nothing.
Imagine a huge country, made of mountains, canyons, waterfalls, forests, plains and steppes. Do you see it ? This country is the vast territory of subjects on which I have opinions…
Beyond the borders of this country, there is the delicate issue of women who steal lilacs from neighbors. I don’t have a visa to visit this mysterious land. I just hope that Mme Larochelle will not be criminally charged…
However, I have an opinion on the nature of digital discussions in the 21st century.e century. But that will be for another column.
I will only quote Brother Thomas, in the novel Rosa candidawhere a young Icelander sets out to save the rose garden2 left unused by a monastery located in an unidentified region: “No wonder you no longer want to languish in the library when, through the window, beauty jumps out at you. »
We are, it seems, the busiest time of year in nurseries. It’s time for sowing, to plant shrubs and bulbs of all kinds, well, all kinds of living things that I don’t know. On this subject, the other day I said on the radio (and as a joke) to the great life specialist Pierre Gingras3 that I was waiting for him at home to look at my semi-untilted yard…
He wrote to me asking if I wanted help; I called him and told him I had no talent for horticulture. Pierre told me to stop talking nonsense, that no one really needs talent to make their yard green, that you just have to get started…
That almost convinced me.
Do you know how to plant a lilac, Pierre?
1. Read The walk to loveby Gaston Miron
2. Read about the novel Rosa candida
3. Read the text by Pierre Gingras “From little lilacs to big ambitions”