Tree lover
Olga Abuín

I do not even have a garden.
Or wait. Maybe this is my garden.
And it has always been.
Once a year. Some years. By the middle-end of winter.

First Saturday of February. Or first Sunday. Does not matter.
A thick coat. Before. When winter was still winter, and mountains kept their white beanies until June or even later.
Even today. You better wrap up warm if you do not want to catch a good cold.

I get here early.
As early as the first carnies.
The young bucks rub their eyes while unloading trees that are not more than long sticks stuck in a slice of soil.
This one is a peach tree, they say, or a pear tree or an apple tree.
You must have faith. They are just sticks stuck in a slice of soil.

And then, when you ask, young and old buds, they answer with little white clouds of breath.
Because even if winter is not what it was, or nothing is now what it was before, it seems, this first weekend of February, this early, in Molins de Rei, not far from Barcelona, people have red cheeks and blow little white clouds of breath when they talk.

Twelve euros for an apple tree.
You can get an aloe vera for nine euros.
Or a purple rose bush, which looks also like a stick but smaller, just for six.
You have to have faith, even if the stick has thorns.
It could turn into a wild cat when you get home.
Or into a spider. Or even a genie. Who knows.
It is all a matter of faith.

Nowadays, at the Candlemas fair in Molins de Rei, you can find many things, not just sticks and genies.
This woman sells honey from the Pyrenees that her bees made, she says, out of thousand sorts of flowers.
That old man and his niece have got some fresh goat cheese and pine nuts, and thyme, and rosemary. Ask them. They will tell you.
And those ones? Genies. Those ones sell genies that look like sticks stuck in a slice of soil. Or who knows. Maybe they will turn into olive trees or fig trees or even kumquat trees if you have faith enough.

It is all a matter of faith.

The smell of grilled meat raises as I walk towards the main square.
I am having a pork sausage sandwich with tomato smashed on toasted bread and some olives, and a beer. Very cold, the beer, please. Of course, sir. And a coffee, a single shot, with a cloud of milk. And then I sit, and I greedily eat my sandwich leaning over the table while peeking at the peasants who walk among the stands carrying sticks stuck in slices of soil.
I wonder how they deal with it when they get back home and the sticks turn into spiders and dragons and demons, and even if they become angels, right? Because, who knows? Who knows how to deal with an angel? You can go crazy. You can lose your mind.

At least, I do not have a garden and I do not need any stick that could turn into god knows what.

Today it is cold.
Like it was before.
When I used to come here with mom and dad.
When I knew for certain that those sticks stuck in a piece of soil would turn, one day, into genies.
When I had no doubts.
When I had faith.