The Koroneiki blooms are small — almost shy. Easy to miss if you are not watching. We watch. We count. We wonder which clusters will carry through to November.
The Koroneiki blooms are small — almost shy. Easy to miss if you are not watching. They appear in clusters along the new growth, cream-white and faintly sweet, and they are gone again in a matter of days. You have to be paying attention. We are always paying attention.
Flowering is the most anxious time of year for an olive farmer, because everything that follows — the fruit, the harvest, the oil — depends entirely on what happens in these few weeks. The wrong wind, a late frost, a sudden heat: any of these can thin a crop before it begins. We have learned not to make promises until June.
This April the bloom was generous. The clusters were dense and the weather held — warm days, cool nights, the sea breeze arriving each afternoon like a reliable friend. We counted. We photographed. We tried not to get too hopeful, and failed, as we always do.
What the flowering teaches, year after year, is that there are things that cannot be engineered. You can prepare the soil and tend the trees and keep the ground clean of competition. But the bloom itself belongs to the tree, and the tree belongs to the spring, and the spring belongs to no one. We are here as witnesses. We are grateful to be allowed to watch.