Lilacs: Friendly to House Cats and Spectacles

Lilacs

Bouquet of lilacs with a pair of spectacles

“Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.”
— Amy Lowell, “Lilacs”

“May is lilac here in New England.”
— Amy Lowell, “Lilacs”

It’s May and the lilacs are blooming here in Seattle, too!

Purple lilacs

Lilacs

White lilacs

Lilacs and books

Lilac and the book, Bringing Nature Home

Lilac photo, edited with inverted color

And don’t you just love that “purple” lilac scent?  What other smells mean Spring to you?

Smells
by Kathryn Worth

Through all the frozen winter
My nose has grown most lonely
For lovely, lovely, colored smells
That come in springtime only.

The purple smell of lilacs,
The yellow smell that blows
Across the air of meadows
Where bright forsythia grows.

The tall pink smell of peach trees,
The low white smell of clover,
And everywhere the great green smell
Of grass the whole world over.