My paternal grandparents lived about three-quarters of a mile from our home when I was a child. My sister and I spent many a summer afternoon playing in their yard and lots of evenings in their screened-in back porch watching thunderstorms light up the sky. They had an old shed in the back yard which had a dog pen attached to it from the days that my grandfather had a dog to accompany him when he drove around his farms to check the crops. I don't remember when Jodie died, but there were no more dogs after her and the dog pen was eventually swallowed by honeysuckle vines. Mimi and I were terrified of the bees surrounding the shed, but we couldn't help being drawn to flowers. Our grandmother showed us the nectar at the base of the petals and we plucked as many flowers as we could and greedily lapped up the nectar.
I can't remember the nectar's taste, but the scent of honeysuckle transports me straight to my grandparents' yard in Heth, Arkansas.
One of the things I love is picking up on the various flower perfumes as you ride along......what car drivers miss in their tin boxes travelling along too fast to smell anything.......
ReplyDeleteThat is so true. There will be wild roses later this summer and juniper to follow the honeysuckle. It's all so much better than exhaust fumes.
DeleteHoneysuckle also takes me back to my childhood-- we had a lot of them growing in our backyard, and we used to lick the nectar from them, too. We also had roses and a crab apple tree, and those scents will stay with me always, as a remembrance of spring-summer.
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