Monday, May 08, 2006
The Fragrant Month
It all begins on a warm day in mid-April, when you open the garden gate, and your instantly bathed in a sweet fragrance that fills the whole garden; Viburnum x juddii has opened its blooms, wafting its heavy perfume in every little zephyr... perfume so delightful that you close your eyes to inhale it. Juddii's cohorts, burkwoodii and carlesii soon join in. From this point, there follows a full month of fragrance; no sooner do the viburnums fade, than the whole woods turns sweet from acres of Japanese honeysuckle; an invasive scoundrel with one week of redemption, when it blooms with as fine a bouquet as there is anywhere; we sit, on May evenings in the screen porch, listening to the June bugs batting against the screens, with flickers of lightning on the western horizon, and the warm breeze coming across the ridge brings waves of honeysuckle sweetness. In the garden itself, clouds of crabapple blooms, and grape-heavy clusters of lilacs add to the sensory delight (lilac "Sensation" is pictured above). I am in olfactory heaven. As the garden year progresses, I could tell you the week by sniffing, for mid-May brings the deciduous azaleas, then come the roses and the trumpet lilies, then the Orienpets, and finally, in sultry late summer, the glory of the giant Oriental lilies; their musky perfume flows downhill in the still air, and lies in sweet blankets in the low spots in the garden. 
// posted by IBOY @ 9:14 PM 
Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home
<< Home
