Spring Flowers and Pollen

Spring, glorious spring, is showing off this year, with most of May wetter than usual, so we’ve taken to calling this month the Queen of Green, and all the campi are also jamming with wildflowers (not just poppies popping) wilder than usual. Frances is busy orchestrating the garden, the bells going here and the whistles there. I spent a morning this week with Giancarlo (the olive mill owner) discussing . . . olives! Because it’s pollen season—and that’s a good thing—for all the olive buds about to open to welcome pollen from an anther to a stigma. Giancarlo tells me there are 250 million olive trees in Italy, each one with thousands of buds about to open, and the winds carry the call-it-invisible pollen all throughout the grove. You can almost hear the soft explosions!