Spring, Sprang, Sprung!

I have a total of 10 Lilac bushes around my house and yard and every one of them looks like this.  They are loaded with blooms and the beauty is surpassed only by the wonderful fragrance of the Lilac.  I do know that the correct conjugation is not spring, sprang, sprung and that by so doing I have changed a noun to a verb, but Spring does that to me.

I understand that we are supposed to have snow today and this will not be the first time my Lilac's have peeked through the cold and frozen white blanket to cheer my day.  April is probably my favorite month simply because of the Lilac's.  Purple is my favorite color and Lilac is my favorite fragrance, so there you go.

I like to think that in another life I would have been a Lilac.  They are strong and can withstand about any condition:  below zero weather to a hot dry summer.  They do like sunshine and will struggle when planted in a shady place and wither and die in the dark.  Much like me.   

I am going to cut a bouquet of these and bring them in the house, but only because I have so many.  I do not like cut flowers because it breaks my heart to watch them die in a vase, but I only get to see these when I go outside and they make me so happy.  I can set on the deck in the evening and lose myself in beautiful dreams with the Lilac fragrance drifts through my reverie.

So, I guess you get the idea that I am maybe a little fond of Lilac's?  I know Spirea will be blooming soon or may have already bloomed, but it has no smell and the flowers are tiny so I over planted on the Lilac bushes.  

The day calls me, so off I go.  You have a good day and remember to stop and smell the flowers along life's pathway!

Getting a little weepy in my old age.

If you have ever been to my house, you know how I love flowers and the Lilac is one of my favorites.  I have seven or 8 altogether, but the one at the end of my back sidewalk is my favorite since it is also my biggest.  It has been blooming now for almost a week.  Every time I go out back, which is a minimum of times a day doing chores, I am met with the most heavenly fragrance.  It is strongest in the early morning and early evening, but all day it is on the air.

There is just something about a Lilac that invokes my younger days.  Seems like there has always been a Lilac bush every where I lived.  All the old Aunts had Lilac bushes.  Lilacs and Spirea.  Oh, and Forsythia.  My Spirea bush is about to croak and the Forsythia quit blooming years ago, but the Lilac is better than ever.  My Lilac bushes came from roots at a lady's house where she was ripping hers out cause she was "sick of the damn thing."  Lilac's are very hardy and can me started from a thought of one. 

Back to the weepy part.  When I pass this Lilac I always stop and breathe deeply.  My mind flits away to Grandma's house and a much happier time in my life.  But it makes me sad.  I know that this will only last a couple weeks and then it is gone until next year.  There is no way to capture the smell.  I have Lilac fragrance that I use in my soaps and lotions, but the headiness I experience at the end of my sidewalk is irreplaceable.  I stand there and just wish I could stop time.  My friend in New York sent me pictures of the Lilac festival there a few years back.  At the time I thought how nice that would be to go visit, but then I thought how nice it is to stroll around my yard and touch my own little crop. 

The one by the sidewalk is getting very big and I have to trim it so it does not close my sidewalk.  Today I am going to dig up some roots on the sidewalk side and take them out back and plant them for the geese.  I know I will have to put a fence around them because 13 geese can trample a lot of my transplanting efforts, but I don't mind.  I just want to share with them.

I don't remember being weepy over a smell before, but I am now.  So I attribute this to the fact that I am getting old and probably a touch of senility is setting in as well.  Or it could also be that I am getting older and have learned to appreciate the little gifts that God has given me in the form of a beautiful bush and a fragrance to carry me back in time.  I am sure that when I get to the Pearly Gates, there will be a Lilac bush on either side, and they will be in full bloom and I will just follow that fragrance right on in and up those streets of gold!  

And that, my friends, makes me smile!