An Iowa Garden

I've been sticking my nose into the flower clusters of Buddleia 'Ellen's Blue' each time I pass it; though it does have a lovely perfume, my main interest has been trying to figure out just what it smells like. I finally placed it: red sweet clover is extensively planted along Iowa roadways, and when you're zipping down the highway in June with 60's rock blasting on the radio and with all the car windows open, this same lovely bouquet bathes your olfactory senses, like intensely sweet, fresh-cut hay. I've not got a very sophisticated nose, which I've always claimed is due to having it broken not once, but twice! The first time I got bucked off a horse and landed flat on my face on a cinder track. That cost me some sniffing power as well as memories of a couple of my earlier birthdays. The second break came while kayaking. This was a lucky break though, as I had to have corrective surgery, and a nurse with the face of an angel took care of me in the hospital that night... a nurse that I later married. It only slightly lessens the romance of that story to know that I was a physician at that hospital, and none of the other nurses wanted to be assigned to me because they were nervous about taking care of a doctor, so they talked Liz into it. Well anyway, this whole business of saying that a particular flower "has a perfume strongly reminiscent of a hillside of double-flowered giant broomflops in full bloom", has never done much for me. This last spring I read that snowdrops have a smell of sweet honey, so I dug through the cupboard and found our jar of honey. On sticking my nose into the jar, I smelled... nothing. Admittedly, it maybe should be mentioned that the jar of honey in question was of uncertain vintage, so that I had to use hot water and a pipe wrench to get the lid off.