It is mimosa season here.
Out in the countryside of the coast here there are areas full of these blooming yellow flowers right at this time of the year. In the city they are for sale everywhere and one can see people walking around with bunches of them in the same way one sees people walking with the ubiquitous baguettes. We have been out on the train and seen a little of the bloom in the hills, but it is fair to say that while public transport is infinitely better here than in my home country, it is still, by any rational standard, car-worshipping garbage. So our impulse to wander deep in the countryside for a day among the blooming mimosas has seemed to require too much heavy lifting for us.
But it is hard to fully embrace giving up on that because mimosas are awesome.
The blooming bushes are crazy full of yellow that sneaks up on you in its intensity. The smell is delightful and interesting, not floral exactly, something else its own. And everyone looks so happy wandering around with their little bunches of mimosas.
Fortunately, when we went to real live French Carnaval Parade, The Battle of the Flowers (a story for perhaps another day), as we went into our bleachers for our assigned seats, we were handed our very own bunches of mimosas!
For many hours I went about with my little bunch of mimosas. As with having a baguette, it gave me a very satisfied, slightly smug feeling to be carrying it around.
In New Orleans at Mardi Gras they toss out beads to a frankly avaricious crowd during the parades. Here they toss out the flowers from the floats to a frankly avaricious crowd. I am as avaricious as the next person, but managed to eschew all the flowers whirling around me. "I am content." I would remind myself. "I have my bunch of mimosas!"
What, you may want to know, do mimosas look like?
Here is my bunch (no camera tricks today, this comes straight from the... phone). These are shown roughly 24 hours later, wrapped in the streamers that fell from the sky during the parade, and they are now hanging decoratively on our wall:
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