Love Over Lilacs

So it seemed odd that right after I posted Love over Bagels, I encountered a blind man in the Arnold Arboretum. We were there because all the lilacs were in bloom, and there were lots of people going from one shrub to another and sniffing them in turn. The arboretum has hundreds of varieties of lilac on one hillside, and the amount of variation in the blooms is rather astonishing.

This man was with a friend of his (or perhaps a family member) and as he sniffed each shrub he would ask his companion to describe the flower to him. I tried to imagine how his mind worked and whether with his heightened sense of smell he could actually catalog each flower separately in his mind by smell, accompanied with descriptive words. I thought about his friend and whether it pained him to not be able to accurately describe the beauty of each flower so that his friend could see it in his mind.

Here are some quick pictures of our walk.

A few lilacs:

Lee with a magnificent Stewartia:


My first look at the Dove Tree (aka The Handkerchief Tree) in bloom:


Clara, a great walker at 18 months: