If something is beautiful to look at it’s not difficult usually to look at it.
You can stare, consider, think that arrangement is top heavy, close your eyes then open them and it’s still there, move, look again. Usually. Ordinarily, if you have sight.
No idea what Punchline is but the flowers look superb.
See?
BUT scent?
Well, it can lift your spirits, magically.
So I hunt it down…. But it fails me everywhere. It’s elusive. Sometimes there, sometimes not. Sometimes you have to stick your nose in a flower and sniff, which you really can’t keep up for very long. (Have you noticed that if people are given a flower, even if it’s plastic, they always sniff it?)
Sometimes it’s there on a breeze, but gone if you enthusiastically have a big sniff to try to catch it again. Sometimes it needs warmth. Sometimes it ages horribly. Sometimes people hate it. Can’t bear lilies? I can’t get enough – but it’s still quite elusive after the first burst. Violets are especially wicked – they numb your nose so you just can’t have a second go.
And, in the garden, too many things which are scented, or reputed to be scented, are at your feet and quite inaccessible to a nose, five foot up.
I keep getting whiffs of sarcococca in the garden. Just whiffs. And, ungratefully, I resent the way it has gone as soon as it’s there.
However, (being positive now, please notice) I have discovered that one or two pieces cut, and placed on a table a few inches from my nose, will, for maybe two days, give me reliable repeat whiffs.
I’m currently trying the same thing with hyacinths.
By the way, you can, I discovered, deal with their floppiness by placing their pot in a tall glass vase or a florist’s bucket.
I presume scented flowers are nature’s evolved way to attract the appropriate pollinators to flower to produce seed for reproduction. Not for human noses since we don’t do bees’ work. Honey smells good. I cannot say that about paperwhite narcissus flowers
Those pollinators get the best of everything…..
Time to check out the Mahonia shrub which has surprisingly spicy scented flowers about now.
One of the scents I always looked forward to when I still had my garden and working outside on warmish February days was Prunus mume. We had 4 trees in various parts of the garden, and the scent was always deliciously in the air here and there. Another, heavier scent was that of Edgeworthia chrysantha, and I do have it planted in a pot on my miniscule patio. Its buds of many small flowers are about a third open and smelling strongly of honey (to my nose).
I’ll check those out.
i love the scent of paperwhites; others say it reminds them of cat urine. i don’t like cats, so that doesn’t explain it.
Lilly of the Valley has a wonderful scent, to my nose- it’s not overwhelming and it doesn’t last. But it takes me right back to my childhood.!
When I click “continue reading: nothing happens. And, lol, I don’t smell anything. Neither frustration nor delight at being unable to share my thoughts on aroma for gardeners.