Wake up and smell the lilacs!

Dear Diary,

They say the memories are most awakened by smells and I think that is true.  The smell of lilacs does it for me.  I think of my Mom and Grandmother often, of course, but never more that in the spring when the lilacs bloom.  In just one week, the lilac bushes around my house went from barely budding to full bloom and it is wonderful.  Old New England houses always had a lilac bush nearby.  In fact, you sometimes find one when you are walking in the woods and then discover a cellar hole nearby where a house use to be.  The house is long gone but the lilac carries on.  There is a lesson in that I think.

There is an old English tradition that lilacs were bad luck and should never be brought into the house.  That certainly doesn't hold true in New England.  If you want to learn a bit more about these wonderful flowers, here's a link.  Walt Whitman wrote a moving tribute to Abraham Lincoln after his assassination in April of 1865 and lilacs were his touching metaphor.  Yes, we New Englanders love our lilacs.