The Honeysuckle is IN!
2008-05-23 -at- 11:51 Filed in: Raves
Perhaps my very favorite thing about living in
Virginia is the May/June honeysuckle season. I've
often had the itch to move somewhere else--Savannah,
Tuscany, Rhone valley, Kaua'i, you name it--but even
if I did, I'd have to be back here for a couple weeks
every year to experience this miracle of nature.
The air is warming up. The leaves are fully green. The grass is green. And then out comes the honeysuckle to play. It is an almost cloyingly sweet smell in the air, and once you've experienced it, it stays with you for the rest of your life.
It is a flowering vine that thrives in the US Southeast. The flowers look like this (from Wikipedia):
Today is a prime example of honeysuckle at its peak. I just went for a mountain bike ride on this 18C (that's about 65 degrees in neanderthal units), 43% humidity, and essentially cloudless sky day. The smell of the honeysuckle hit me immediately as I walked my bike past the honeysuckle vine behind my house -- we planted the vine there when we moved here in 1995, so that I could enjoy days just like this. And then throughout my ride, each time I rode near a vine, boom there it was. Utterly fabulous.
Even my beloved Kaua`i, for all its tropical splendor and glory, doesn't have anything that can touch Virginia honeysuckle. The sad part is that it's only in full bloom for a couple weeks. When the heat cranks up here by mid-June, the flowers die quickly. I still get whiffs of it from time to time when I take my bike out just after sunrise, which is about the only bearably not-hot part of the day by July, but it's nothing as strong as it is now.
The vine itself is pretty, but most people wouldn't even give it a second look. It's all about the smell in the air.
Viva la honeysuckle!
Cheers,
Ken
The air is warming up. The leaves are fully green. The grass is green. And then out comes the honeysuckle to play. It is an almost cloyingly sweet smell in the air, and once you've experienced it, it stays with you for the rest of your life.
It is a flowering vine that thrives in the US Southeast. The flowers look like this (from Wikipedia):
Today is a prime example of honeysuckle at its peak. I just went for a mountain bike ride on this 18C (that's about 65 degrees in neanderthal units), 43% humidity, and essentially cloudless sky day. The smell of the honeysuckle hit me immediately as I walked my bike past the honeysuckle vine behind my house -- we planted the vine there when we moved here in 1995, so that I could enjoy days just like this. And then throughout my ride, each time I rode near a vine, boom there it was. Utterly fabulous.
Even my beloved Kaua`i, for all its tropical splendor and glory, doesn't have anything that can touch Virginia honeysuckle. The sad part is that it's only in full bloom for a couple weeks. When the heat cranks up here by mid-June, the flowers die quickly. I still get whiffs of it from time to time when I take my bike out just after sunrise, which is about the only bearably not-hot part of the day by July, but it's nothing as strong as it is now.
The vine itself is pretty, but most people wouldn't even give it a second look. It's all about the smell in the air.
Viva la honeysuckle!
Cheers,
Ken
|