I Like Fuzzy Things

... peaches, mohair, moss and pussy willow. A couple of weeks ago we brought home what looked like a tortured branch shoved in a pot of dirt, with the promise of this:



It makes our living room look so rich and still, these soft, stamen-covered explosions, another few opening each day. I'm tempted to use a phrase Goethe coined to describe something else altogether (architecture), to describe this silent display: "like frozen music."



I really hope we can keep it alive long enough to plant it in the Spring.

When I was a child, we had a pussy willow in our little city backyard in Chicago. It grew next to our garage, which was about a century old. When cars got much longer in the 50s, they just tacked a half-story sort of carbuncle on the back of the garage. How we loved that carbuncle! My neighbor Sophia (who now has a drool-worthy blog) and I used to climb it, and then the low branches of the pussy willow, to sit on the steep roof of the garage. I still remember how warm the roof was in the summer, and the spectacular display of the tree each Spring.

And now in my living room.