Lilacs

The lilacs are early this year. This is not something I would normally notice, but for the past few years the smell of lilacs have always been accompanied with finals. The building where I spent much time while at college has a lovely lilac collection, with many different hues of purple. One particularly bad finals period (I think it was my junior year) I turned in my last paper and skipped out of the building (I don't normally skip) and threw myself into the lilac grove and lay there on the ground and inhaled the scent.

Lilacs may be my favorite flower because of how good they smell. The purple doesn't hurt, either. Fortunately for me, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens have a sizable lilac grove, which is where I took these pictures. What totally surprised me was how people react when they see (or smell) them. Hardened New York types, whom I would assume would have no real interest in plant-life, barrel over and bury their faces in the bushes. I saw an older woman, bending over them, murmuring, "heavenly, heavenly, heavenly." People don't take as many pictures of the lilacs, but they certainly are interested in them. It's nice to see this type of love and devotion for flowers.

To me, lilacs mean school, and having silly finals adventures with my friends, that had nothing to do with books and everything to do with being outside. But my love of lilacs goes farther back than that. My grandmother's house had lilac bushes on the side of it and as children my sister and I and two of our cousins made worlds in there. Usually they were households, which each of us having a separate section or imagining different rooms. I spent a lot of time in those branches. My parents, too, have lilacs in their backyard. My sister and I would play badminton (and still do) back there without a net and would be forever trapping the birdie in the lilacs, and did not always take the proper care with getting it down. Lilacs are bigger than Brooklyn in my eyes, but they never cease to make me happy.