Come this time of year, I seldom shop indoors.
Pottery? Berries? Corn and flowers and handmade soap? It's all about outside.
"Come on," I said to the husband on a recent Sunday. "We're going to the market."
It's what I wait for all year long: the opportunity to get out of the malls and the supermarkets, and on to the streets, where we will do our shopping while watching jugglers and listening to guitarists and handling tomatoes and inhaling the scent of frying onions. We will not be pushing grocery carts, but we will be eating ice cream.
"Didn't we go to the market last weekend?" the husband will often ask.
"Of course we did," I said. "You ready to go?" The husband, let's just say, is slightly less enthusiastic than I am about the ritual. It's not that he isn't fond of the seasonal farmer's market. It's just that I'm a tad obsessed.
I have, after all, been known to wait in border lineups in order to get to a market. I have taken ferries in pursuit of fruit stands and used the better part of a tank of gas in search of farm-fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob.
"But don't we have enough jams and jellies?" asked the husband recently when I was loading up on homemade preserves.
He's right, of course. By season's end, I will need another pantry in order to accommodate my jars of conserves and pickles -not to mention a boost on the credit line. No matter. They're yummy, those market treasures. And you have to admit they're cute.
Same with the handcrafted earrings and the pottery coffee mugs. You could make a case that we have enough, especially given that I use a single mug in a sitting. Still, they're hard to resist.
"What do you have there?" asked the husband not long ago. We were doing the weekend market thing and had split up momentarily -me, to browse, he, to sit -and when we reconnected, his eyes made their way to my purchase. Make that, my purchases.
I had a toque for a toddler. I had three jars of salad dressing. I had an apron, a tea cosy and a dozen wooden coasters.
"Don't we have coasters?" asked the husband. "Of course," I said. "These will be a gift."
"And the toque?" he asked. It would be for our great-niece, I informed him.
"But it's July," he said.
"It's a Christmas present, silly," I said. "It's usually cold at Christmas."
And so it goes. The husband, I'm thinking, should take solace in the fact that market time is a seasonal thing and will be done at summer's end.
But I will not fret when the markets close and the stalls shut down for winter. They won't be back for months, I know.
But the craft fairs will be coming.
