Of Cats & Lilacs

[akirlu]

Yesterday was a big day for Spike. In the morning, in the usual pre-tuna truce, she managed to get fully nose-to-nose with Tinka and hold for several beats before freaking out and hissing and squalling. Then all was chaos, of course, but before that, there was a full heart-beat, maybe two, when they were a whisker apart and simply regarding each

Comments

[chiefwirehead]

Gardens that smell good remind me of my first trip to Hawaii - yea, the perfume of tropical flowers is really like that.

I've been trying to grow night-blooming jasmine, and or gardenia to remind me- but always manage to kill them. Our lemon tree tree is the next best thing though (The "Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet" lyric is not out of line)

Now, usually what I smell in our neighborhood is during evening runs, and then it's the sweet smell of, uh, hamburgers. Or barbeque. A slightly different kind of Our Town.

[akirlu]

I've never been to Hawaii (!), but I have some experience of the scent of ginger, tiare, and gardenia when they are massed, so I can imagine. Surprisingly, there are times of year when Los Angeles smells of perfume in the evenings, too. There's a flowering tree that's cultivated a lot there -- I think of it as flowering boxwood, but none of the pictures I can find of buxus look anything like the tree I remember -- that sprouts clusters of tiny ivory white flowers in the spring, and the smell is just heaven.

For scented things that grow well in the Bay Area, you might try: honeysuckle, wisteria, rosa rugosa, and pink jasmine. I know my mom had good luck with all of them in San Jose.

[don_fitch]

Large, shiny leaves, clusters of white to cream flowers (with sticky orange seeds revealed when the seed-pod opens)? Sounds like Pittosporum (a south-African/Australian genus, I think). P. tobira is most common as a shrub or small tree, and is sometimes called "Victorian Boxwood", though P. undulatum has that as its official common name. For another extemely fragrant (though otherwise unnoticible big green bush) there's Osmanthus fragrans ("sweet olive").

[akirlu]

Victorian Boxwood! Yes, that's it! Or at least, googling finds me this image for Victorian Box, which is Pittosporum undulatum, and that's the tree I was thinking of. They say it's also known as "mock orange" so now I know what that is.

[chiefwirehead]

Oddly, the scent of plumeria is what is most notable in Hawaii. I had never heard of it before going there.

Ah wisteria - one of my favorite smells, and its not an easy plant to kill, either. It (well, mine) only bloom for about 2 weeks at the beginning of april. It smells like spicy gumdrops to me.

Star Jasmine works here as well - that smell always reminds me of typing and driver's ed (not sure what Freud would think of that) because at summer school during my high school days there were planter boxes full of them.

[akirlu]

Pink jasmine, as I recall tends to bloom April into May, and maybe early June, in the Bay Area. The scent is really fine.

Star jasmine -- which as I understand it, isn't a true jasmine at all -- yes, that's definitely a "summer school" scent. I think every school I attended in San Jose had that stuff growing in planters and beds. It's hard to kill and requires little maintenance, I think are its primary institutional virtues. I've never cared for the scent much.

(The other plants that were perennial favorites with SJUSD in my childhood were ivy, and pyracantha -- presumably for similar reasons.)

[holyoutlaw]

Our own tiny lilac is only just starting to bloom, very tentatively.

All hunkered down, with its tail thrashing to beat hell. But it's blooming!

[akirlu]

I now have the image of little lilac blossoms going everywhere because the little hunkered lilac is lashing its tail. Hah!

[mjlayman]

I love lilacs! Told you that before, didn't I.

[akirlu]

That's okay, you can tell me again. I quite like them, myself.

[apostle_of_eris]

For me, one of the greatest perversities of Chicago’s weather is that early in May, for the week that the lilacs are in bloom, there’s a cold wave, killing the scent. Just about every deity-blasted year. Temperatures just dropped from the 70's to the 50's, and by golly, the lilacs are out.
*GRUMP*

[akirlu]

Man, that does righteously suck. They're pretty enough, and all, visually speaking, but what makes lilacs lilacs is the smell.