Fall is a sweet season. All the flavors, having mellowed in the long slow decline of summer, apex now. The soft round flavors of butternut squash, d’Anjou pears and Bacalan de Rennnes cabbage. They are the expression of all the tenderness of fall: it’s gentle temperatures, the return of rain after a long drought and the weakening yet glorious light.

Yet fall is bitter, too. Radicchio at it’s peak, a second flush of mizuna, and kale before it is broke by frost. Fall’s tumbling temperatures and tumbling leaves breeds a melancholy in me. A celebratory melancholy akin to my age: 54. Too old to be middle-age, too young to be “old”, in the flummoxing in-between, like a teenager. Fall acts that way too. Flummoxes as one triumphant day out our kitchen window the Fuji cherry flares up in golds, oranges and olive browns, then 2 days later strips that tree with wind and rain.

Fall is a restful time to me, post-harvest. Pumpkins on the shelves, potatoes in crates and pears wrapped in paper—a trick we just learned for ripening them. I collapse a bit like the leaves, spend weekend afternoons with a book on the sofa instead of on a ladder with a bushel basket. Meander when I’m in the garden more than rush, enjoying whats left with a bittersweet “adieu” on my lips.

Last Sunday I was buoyed-up out of my post-harvest slump when I saw first one, then two, then three little purple-striped saffron crocus blooming in the drive. I had tried growing my own saffron for years. I planted the little corms of Crocus sativus in rockeries and crockery, actually anywhere that mimicked the rocky native soils where they grow in southwestern Asia. I always lost them; I attributed it to this sodden climate I call home. But last year I planted 5 corms in our gravelly raised drive where I grow my species tulips, cyclamen and lavender, and all the other plants that wouldn’t last a minute in our alluvial muck. I swore it was the last time I’d try.

I’m glad I did.

Saffron is the considered the most expensive spice; it takes nearly 75,000 flowers to produce 1 pound. It is not the flowers per se but the 3 red anthers within that are prized. The world’s best saffron comes from Spain, the province of Valencia in particular. It was introduced their centuries ago by the Arabs, who called it zaffra or zafaran, their word for yellow. The word saffron probably conjures the color yellow in more people’s minds than any flavor, though saffron is flavorful indeed.

As I was writing this I placed one red thread on my tongue to taste saffron, not food flavored with saffron. Bitterness was the first word that jumped in my head to describe it, but as I approached that bitterness, rolling my tongue to let the flavor of saffron cover my entire mouth, the bitterness quickly vanished, replaced by a shadowy sweetness, like gold leaves turning brown. I made another  attempt: the taste of pulverized bones and amber, alchemical amber and wood, wood and its ash, all in a bright yellow bath. But I settled for one word, that word is saffron. The flavor is that unique.

I don’t cook with it often. It is still expensive. And it lends itself to complex dishes and spice combinations that don’t happen every day in our house. Though I can’t imagine our Christmas paella without it, or the sunshiny rice we serve with Persian or Punjabi dishes.

Saffron has been collected and cultivated for 4000 years, run that by your heirloom tomatoes. It has long been used medicinally and for dye as well as in cooking. It had even spawned a 14 day war in the 1300s called the Saffron War, when a shipment of saffron from Greece on it’s way to plague ravaged Europe was captured.

The medieval herbalist Christopher Catton wrote, “Saffron has the power to quicken the spirits, and the virtue thereof pierces by and by to the heart, provoking laughter and merriment.”  Certainly last sunday my spirits were quickened by the mere sight of saffron finally flowering in my garden after numerous attempts over the past 20 years.

I spent the week singing:

“I’m just mad about saffron

She’s just mad about me…

They call me mellow yellow,

Quite rightly,

They call me mellow yellow ,

Quite rightly.”

In my giddiness I forgot to harvest my saffron. Somehow I felt complete just seeing it bloom. Besides how does one harvest saffron? After hoisting pumpkins into wheelbarrows and schlepping bushels of apples and pears around all my fine motor skills were shot. This delicate harvest seemed daunting. Would I need a tweezer? Or a Spanish virgin?

Somehow I imagine flocks of dove-like white-gowned Spanish girls, descending on the rocky saffron-growing plains of Spain. As they gently pass among the flowers, bending gracefully like ballerinas and picking the 3 red stamens without damaging a petal. Maybe they have purposefully long finger nails, like the Indian girls who pick the first flush of Darjeeling on the slopes in western Bengal. I imagine the less-capable returning with urine-yellow stains on their gowns—as shameful as a scarlet “A”.

Forgive me, Fall also has me tumbling into poetic reveries about the workings of the world.

The truth of the matter is although saffron is still harvested by hand—what sort of machine could possible do it?—the flowers are harvested whole. And the harvesters, at least from the internet images I found, are older men and women; let’s say 54 or so.

So there is nothing tricky or magical to it. No full moon to wait for, no virgins, no golden tweezers. But as I plunged into the rainy week leaving and returning in the dark, one of the grim pay offs of the season, my saffron sat unattended. Then one morning when I was getting a blesséd late start, the sun, filtering through low gray clouds, exposed my saffron crop. One, two, three purple flowers flattened to the ground by rain and gnawed of every bit of beauty by slugs.

Now I hardly think of our omnivorous hoards of slugs as gourmands, though they do love sweet basil, tender lettuce leaves and vine ripened heirloom tomatoes as much as we do. But I should have known that anything as spring-fresh as crocus petals this time of year would be prized. So I quickly pinched the crocuses’ rain smudged and slug-notched remains and rushed into the kitchen. The slugs had totally avoided the red stamens and feasted only on the petals.

Now 5 little threads of saffron aren’t going to sustain like the 1000 pounds of squash we harvested. But then again the 17th century herbalist Culpepper warned “when the dose is too large, it produces a heaviness of head and sleepiness. Some have fallen into immoderate convulsive laughter which ended in death.” I wonder how many threads of saffron you’d have to eat to reach a seemingly happy yet untimely death.

Modern science has show saffron to be the richest known source of vitamin B2. But warns that 5 grams of saffron—that’s 826 crocus worth— can cause severe symptoms. Some of which are elated mood or excessive spending, I think you’d have to do some excessive spending to get enough saffron to poison yourself. Anyway beyond the simple elation I felt from finally having saffron crocus bloom in my garden I doubt I am in danger from my meagre harvest.

I have already begun probing the depths of our cookbook collection for saffron recipes. I want to make something special with my first homegrown saffron, now that I consider it the quintessential Fall flavor. Not bittersweet exactly, somewhere in between where bitter and sweet come to terms, mellow each other out…

“… quite rightly.”