Fragrance in the Air

Stepping out the door this morning, I was immersed in the fragrance of spring.  Years ago I read the classic book The Fragrant Year, by Helen Van Pelt Wilson and Leonie Bell, and I've planted my gardens for fragrance ever since.  This is a lovely book, available at Amazon for very little, with line drawings by Leonie Bell that are exquisite. I take it down to reread with pleasure every so often, but today I find I don't need to actually see it to remember it, for in front of me are the Clematis armandii, the little daphne, the narcissus and daffodils, and the old purple flags of which Leonie Bell and Helen Van Pelt Wilson speak.

Kali and I head for the meadow, where my husband is burning the brush from the trees he has felled this winter.

First we admire the daffodils and narcissus, which grow in the grasses... (Last year I did not plant them in time, so just threw them out, with glorious results.)

They grow in our Mediterranean climate with little care, and seem to return faithfully.  A boon for a careless gardener like me.

The daffodil Sweetness just blooms and blooms, a sheet of deep yellow across from the planter box under the redwood, where Daphne collina has struggled on for 15 years or so, blooming each March and April.

The last plants Kali and I visit are in Peter Rabbit's garden, as yet to have its spring clean-up.  There we see  the old purple flags that continue to survive, and the Clematis armandii, almost past, which pumps out its delicious scent on the ambient air.