Sunshine and Eucalyptus: Grand Army Plaza

A quick post, which is exactly how I navigated the frosty 8 a.m. market this morning.

First into the bag were red potatoes, onions and garlic, followed by an unwieldy sprawl of black beets and somehow equally long broccoli rabe — a good 18 inches from tip to root — plus a soft, wet head of red lettuce. At the next stall came the apples — four varieties all priced the same for quick weighing — and then on to the second Buon Pane stand for apple-nut danishes to go with the coffee that R. was home grinding beans for.

Final stop was the Milk Thistle tent, where I extracted the two clanking glass quart bottles from beneath the brown bag of flaky danishes and traded them in for new, cold bottles of still-congealing yogurt and medium-fat milk.














































If I wasn't a perfect model of efficiency, it was because the sun was flooding it all. Such a morning! Yellow light warmed the vulnerable bits of purple, yellow and orange carrots, and bouquets of beets, mounded like rose buds. Heads of white, yellow and purple cauliflower were regrettably in shade, but green chard and bok choy bundles glistened, the little white roots on stoic leek trios stood out happily, and buckets of eucalyptus, warming with the day, threw off their comforting cough drop scent.

A note: Should you encounter these blue-gray sirens, wafting their brisk, heady scent your way as you hurry through a late-autumn market with two heavy canvas bags, a loved-one waiting beside the coffee machine, and fingertips gone frozen from coaxing wet lettuce into a plastic bag, stop. Stop and breathe deeply. Appreciatively. Delight in the shape of their leaves, like little school-girl collars, and maybe think about how their scent can suddenly hit a lone jogger in the Los Angeles canyons — a warm, dusty, more-muted scent, making a person suddenly aware that eucalyptus is a real, live growing thing and not something that originates in bathroom potpourri bowls. Inhale and think and smile and maybe snap a picture.

And then move on, sister.

Leave that eucalyptus — with its glue-like sap that will stick to your favorite vase, and your fingers, and then your less-favorite vase, and if you're unlucky also the faucets in the bathroom and maybe your hair and the kitchen counter — for the suckers. Some things are for bringing home, and others are for enjoying where they stand.