I am not a gardener. I do not have a green thumb. Not so much because I kill things, but more because I don't ever get around to planting anything to begin with. In my defense we did move into our current home 3 weeks before Ella was born and have been a wee bit busy ever since.
Except this Lilac bush. Lilacs remind me of growing up in the country and stopping on the way to my grandmothers to pick a bunch for her, wrapping them in wet paper towels and aluminum foil to keep the stems moist, sniffing them all the way down the dirt road to her house. I love the color, the smell, the dainty little flowers. This probably explains why the lilac bush is one of very few things I've gotten around to planting. It went in the ground in 2002, right before Ella was born and right after we moved in to our house.
The first few years we got nothing ... not a single bloom. Then for a couple of years, we got buds but maybe one or two bunches would bloom. Finally, this year, its gone CRAZY. Probably 50 bunches of blooms. This is it on its way to full bloom. The rest of those little dark purple blooms are now open.
I LOVE IT! To me this says Spring. I planted it right outside my office window for the sole purpose of being able to open the window and smell it while working!
2 comments:
OH!
So thats the "weed" that Uncle Hung made firmly sure that I was not supposed to weed wack or you would get home a very unhappy camper. lol
pretty.
For me, lilacs + grandma = happy memories, too. I had an unexpected experience this spring when I came across my first lilac bloom of the season. I smelled it, and inexplicably, I began to cry. I wasn't quite sure why this had happened. I mentioned it later to my mom, and she said, "Oh, it's because you miss Grammy." (My sweet, amazing, cherished grandmother who died at 93 2-1/2 years ago. I miss her every day) I wasn't sure what she was talking about. But apparently, when I was very young, as soon as the first lilac buds opened in the spring, my Grammy and I would smell them together, and that was the true sign that spring had arrived again. So whenever I see lilacs, I smile, because they remind me of her.
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