365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Friday, May 19, 2023
Scratch-and-Sniff
Day 218: I wish I could include a scratch-and-sniff patch with this post to carry to my readers the marvelous blend of fragrances rising from my yard on these over-warm afternoons. While the lilac dominates, an occasional current of air brings lily-of-the-valley into play, both scents riding atop a deeper, softer layer of mountain-ash. When these fade, the Philadelphus steps up, its sweet aroma filling the entire neighbourhood. It does my heart good to see the lilac strong again. When I moved here some thirty years ago, it was leggy and feeble, having grown in the shadow of an immense branch of Douglas-fir. When the branch was removed, I cut the lilac back radically per the instructions in a horticultural manual. They assured me it would benefit from the pruning and be back at full strength in just a few years. That was far from the case! It took close to twenty years before it bore a single flower. Since then, it has been putting on a few new spikes each year until now, at long last, it looks like a lilac again.
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