I Smell a Day at the Beach

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For the past few weeks, I've joyously inhaled the strong, slapdash scent of suntan lotion emanating from blooms on my morning run. Which ones, though, I can't tell from quick visual scans of the colorful explosions that seemed to erupt overnight. Oddly, the scent fades as the day gains. Or maybe my nose has too much competition as the sun strengthens. I've tried to find the flowers in Google by typing in "flowers smelling like suntan lotion" only to discover floral scents are far more subjective than I expected. Thus, someone might describe the smell as honeysuckle to my Hawaiian Tropic. And somehow everything smells like honeysuckle, somewhere.

In any event, I'm going to drink it up while I can -- and be so grateful I don't suffer from allergies. Our deciduous trees are again in bloom, helping fill in the landscape between those frou-frou palms, sturdy pines and anemic eucalyptus trees. Soon the annual weather pattern we call "May Gray" and "June Gloom" will cast everything in a dull light before the sun returns with a vengeance and makes those of us without air conditioning long for March.

[This "treated" photo is from a flower bed at the Francis Parker School in Mission Hills.]

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