"Day 10 - French Rhododendron Honey
Colour: The colour of sugar dissolving in hot water; that white cloudiness, with a faint yellow tint I can only see when looking at it slantwise, to the left of me, not when I hold it up to the light.
Smell: Strange, it has almost no scent at all; it's also crystallized, so it's a bit difficult to scoop some out with the wand, but it smells cold with an elusive citrus squirt hovering about its edges.
Taste: There is a kind of sugar cube my grandfather used to give my sister and me every morning when we were small, not so much a cube as a cabochon, irregularly rounded, clear and cloudy by turns. It was called sikkar nabet, which is "plant sugar." This tastes like it. The honey taste is so pale, so faint, it really is almost sugar water. I'm reminded of maple sap in buckets, right at the beginning of the boiling process that produces maple syrup, where it's still water enough to be used for steeping tea."
Two haiku today
One which is written in French
Is this showing off?
My French is only really good enough to approximate the second haiku, but they seem to be a matched set, one replying to the other from opposite sides of the Atlantic, with the moon as the pivot. They are both ethereal and lovely, as (well written) haiku tend to be. There is a continuity there, as well - as the honey recalls Amal's grandfather's sugar candy (and I went looking for some sort of link or image of sikkar nabet, and could not find one), the first haiku recalls the second, and both recall the sugar candy - delightful.
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