I just can't help myself....I need to share. My yard wafts of the sweet scent of summer. Lilacs, a perfume that teases the olfactory for a couple of weeks every year with it's heavenly bouquet. Of course I love the purple ones best, a feast for the eye as well as the nose, but I think the white ones are just as lovely, elegant and regal, reminding me of nuptials and weddings and all things pure and good.
Although I love them on the tree, I always pick some and bring their potency inside. It soothes me like a warm, sudsy bath, transporting me back to childhood days and the grove of trees dripping with clusters of flowers that I played among. The lilac tree will always remind me of childhood, a door to the past always open. They remind me of my mother but for different reasons. She never liked them. Argued they smelled way too strong and were too full of bugs. But when I picked her little bouquets she would put them in a vase because they were a gift from me.
My mother always disliked lilacs in the house because in her time they were used for funerals. Years ago the recently departed were laid out in the parlour and the heady scent of lilacs mingled with the pong of death, so they always brought negative memories to the front. I am so thankful I can enjoy the precious lilac without sad memories to taint them; so happy to welcome them into my home like an old friend. So pretty, so sweet, so utterly divine.