Thursday, July 7, 2011

A mystery flower

I'm not a coffee drinker but I just love the smell, so sometimes I brew a pot and just enjoy the aroma.  This goes against my frugal nature, so when the coffee is cold I toss it out onto a scraggly bush in my front yard.  The only reason this bush is alive today is that my inherent laziness has prohibited me from garnering the enthusiasm necessary to dig it up.


Imagine my surprise when the pitiful thing bloomed!  And, thrill upon thrill, the scent was heavenly.  Clueless as I am about native southern plants, I plucked a flower and asked a green thumbed friend to ID it.


"That's a gardenia," she said.  "I've been trying to grow one for about ten years now.  They're acid loving plants and very finicky."


Serendipity.  I love it.

2 comments:

Cindy Preston said...

I hade 4 gardenia bushes outside my kitchen in Fayetteville, I loved the smell! But they doo look scraggey when they are not in bloom! Just beyond them was a wisteria "tree" (vine wrapped back onto itself a gazillion times)that also produced a heavenly scent! I think the wisteria bloomed earlier though, they were not smelling beautiful at the same time. :)

Cindy Preston said...

Sorry, I had 4 and they do look scraggly! I posted that last comment without proofreading it! (So NOT normally me!) Anyhow, lilacs are the only wonderfully smelling flowering bush I have now. Enjoy your gardenias!