Monday, March 03, 2008

My Favorite Flower Smell of All

Sunday afternoon, I went out into the back yard with the dogs.

As I wandered around and they ran and played, I caught a whiff of flowers.

I stopped in my tracks, closed my eyes, and took a slow, deep breath.

Orange blossoms!


Absolutely my favorite smell on this earth. I went over to our navel orange and tangelo trees and found the first blossoms on each. I stood there with my head in each tree, just breathing in the beautiful smell.

If you haven't smelled orange blossoms, it's pretty close in smell to honeysuckle, but a couple of shades different. And a good bit stronger smell than on a honeysuckle vine.

There are still orange groves within a few miles of where we live, and maybe next weekend, Lovely Wife and I can make our annual pilgrimage to the rural roads near here that allow us to roll down the windows, drive slowly, and just immerse ourselves in the incredible experience of being right smack dab in the middle of an orange grove.

A great experience, and probably my favorite time in Florida, before it gets really hot, but the days are warm and breezy.

After checking out the blossoms on our own trees yesterday, I knocked off the remaining oranges and tangelos, so that the trees can put their energy toward new blossoms and soon after the blossoms are gone, new fruit.


I know. It seems shameful, but the ones that were left on our trees this late didn't taste good any more.

2 comments:

photowannabe said...

That's what we had to do to our pomegranetes too. Didn't get to our plum tree in time and we don't have many blossoms this time.
Love this time of year and all the new beginnings.

Rockstar Mom said...

I have never smelled an orange blossom, but I love honeysuckle.

One of my daughter's desires while in Florida was to pick an orange off of a tree. She was only 8 at the time. But she got to pick a couple and unfortunately they were not too good.

We are partial to our Clementine Tangerines.