A Passion for Fragrance

Warm sweet clove fragrance of My Mary Azalea begs one to linger longer than usual to take in the beauty of her soft yellow flowers edged with just a whisper of burnt orange.  She's at her finest moment, the love of the gardens, and she demurely knows it.  No one person resists her.  This sultry temptress incognito, so subtly intoxicating, filling our senses with the faint passion of a longing for something more, like that of a caterpillar that has begun its journey to find that special place to fall into a deep sleep not really knowing why.

Sweet-shrub Athens begins to open her buds...one, two, ten, twenty, fifty, and two hundred.  Whiffs of freshly cut honeydew melon come and go day one, hang around day two, tantalize day three, cross over the line day four, overwhelm day five, and become quite vulgar by day six, morphing into an assault of a thousand rotting honeydews blasting one in the face. She's by the front door.  Catalog promised the scintillating aroma of luscious juicy red strawberries. They lied.  She's too hefty to relocate; she'd need a good blasting to kingdom come to remove her and all those tenacious baby suckers she keeps replenishing. She's at the first of many of her finest moments to come this season and next, so we comfort or agitate ourselves in knowing she's the finest of front door people repellents this side of heaven :(

Robed in a zillion tiny petals and hundreds of bees, China Girl Holly's fragrance remains evanescent; fluctuating with the gentle breezes or hiding in the soft stillness.  Up close...in her face is the only way to appreciate those delicate flowers and their evasive perfume.  There's no comparison, as the storms this morning stripped her of her petaled beauty, and all that can be said is that her scent reminds us of her, and let it remain your mystery for yet another year.