Between protecting the baby tomatoes from the weather flash mobs and mourning blossoms blasted off the fruit trees by gale-force winds this month, I enjoyed the year’s lilac bounty less fully than I should have.
A phone call from a reader lamenting that lilacs were missed on an early-season list of garden essentials assured that I was tuned in for every hue of purple and violet. A friend wrangling the sorrow of leaving a full and verdant garden when she moved to high and dry Boulder County from San Francisco advanced the anticipation with the footnote “but we didn’t have lilacs there.”
I was ready when the bushes near my front porch burst into dusky flowers and sweet scent. I noticed the indigo pyramids on the ancient stands at Anne’s house and cringed a bit when the new guy on the block gave a high- and-tight cut to a hedge once frosted pale pink.
This year’s sprays survived the snow and the wind and were unnipped by early frost. And perhaps because there were no feelings of loss, I missed the long gaze and deep breath of lilacs until this morning, when a laggard presented an armful of snowy blooms. I looked close, stuck my nose in and breathed deeply, committing to sense memory the last moments of a nearly missed season.
Dana Coffield, The Denver Post
