Some kids get a bedtime story. Our kid takes hers in the morning.

It’s the green season. Most buds and blossoms have done their work and we now walk in the presence of ferns (along with towering devil’s club, salmonberry, sugar scoop, twisted stalk, river violet, deer heart, red elderberry, and all kinds of micro-greenery). The ferns–I think most are woodferns– tell Cedar all kinds of smell-stories each walk. Yesterday she smelled the deer before we saw it high tail down the trail. Today she consulted the ferns to smell the story of who had left such a redolent gift right in the middle of our path and where they went–likely relieved–after such a generous deposit.

My “Picture This” app tells me that “the orderly arranged woodfern really soothes obsessive-compulsive disorders.” (I’m a bit skeptical there, but I’ll admit that as Cedar smells the stories, I see no sign of her obsessing over fetching.) In any case, no matter how we spin or smell or need our narratives, we’re both lucky to be graced by June’s feathery fern beauty.