Now that the clocks have gone forward, the park is open late enough to take a walk after dinner. On my way around yesterday evening I passed a couple of beds packed with Hyacinths. The fragrance was delightful and took me back to the first time I smelt a Hyacinth. I was mooching around a garden centre one evening after work, about four years ago now, when I caught a whiff of something sweet in the air. At first I thought I had imagined it, or perhaps just caught the remnants of someone's perfume on the air; but the more I wandered the more I realised that it was coming from somewhere nearby. So after doing a couple of laps of the nursery area while sniffing the air (I must have looked a bit crazy), I traced the sweet aroma to a small display of Hyacinths. I remember that I was absolutely delighted, though I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe it was because at the time it was a revelation that flowers could smell so lovely. Apart from roses and a vague recollection of the very general floral smell that you find in a florists, I had forgotten that nature was awash with aroma. I bought three small plants, which I kept in my sunny kitchen. So enamoured was I with the aroma that I even tried to capture the scent by immersing the small flower heads in alcohol and then glycerine (soon after getting the plants I had watched the movie Perfume and had become fascinated with the idea of making my own perfume), but all I ended up with was a rather foul-smelling mush. I was dismayed to find that the flowers lost their aroma almost as soon as they were picked. I really believe that that little, seemingly insignificant event - catching an aroma on the breeze - set me on the path that I'm now on, sparking an interest in and love for aromatic plants that I never knew I had.
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