Gardenias in Colorado?

Gardenias In Colorado?

There I was, my husband walking next to me, just minding my own business and doing a bit of shopping. Suddenly, a smell overwhelmed me. Something as familiar as my own face in the mirror. The smell gently tugged parts of my very being all the way back to Georgia. Well, not really ‘gently tugged‘, more like roughly snatched.

I smelled that wonderful, pungent sweet smell of gardenia blooms. I thought to myself I must be dreaming, or else wishful thinking had made itself a bit too real. Gardenias are not something you see in the high desert area of south west Colorado. For that matter, where I was, flowers in general were few and far between other than a few yellow flowered weeds here and there. I knew I must really be losing it.

I stopped right in the middle of the aisle with my husband wondering what was wrong with me. I told him I smelled gardenias, but that I knew they couldn’t be anywhere around. I told him, and myself, that it must be some perfume or something. So we kept walking with the scent seeming to get stronger. As we rounded the aisle, there, right in the center of the big front aisle, were 2 gallon containers filled with blooming gardenias.

I quickly felt better knowing I wasn’t losing my mind. I stood and stared at them like they were from another planet. I think I touched or smelled every bloom I could find. I wondered at their glossy, deep green leaves. I was amazed at the white fullness of their blossoms. I was almost drinking the scent like a fine wine. My husband, bless him and his patience, probably thought I was nuts for sure.

Ok, so it seems a little silly to go so overboard about a few gardenia plants, but, when a simple smell takes you back home, what else could you expect? When I had ooh’d and ahh’d over the plants, we moved on, with him walking and me floating on the fragrance. I think someone, somewhere, set me up, because much to my surprise just down a ways from the gardenias were azaleas. Beautiful, pink and white blossomed azaleas. A bounty of bushes in little 2 gallon pots, just like the gardenias.

Why on earth would gardenias and azaleas be in Colorado? The weather isn’t exactly hospitable for their survival. I’ve never heard of either of them surviving a minus 10 degree winter and 2 foot of snow. I asked one of the cashiers and she said people out there treated them like houseplants. They enjoyed them while they bloomed and then threw them out at the end of the season, only to replace them the next year. Like a common begonia. An annual. How sad! These were not houseplants! What an outrage! They were gardenias and azaleas, for goodness sakes! Little plants that turned into bushes and hedges. Plants that would burst forth with blooms every spring when it began to warm up! They were perennials, not annuals. It’s was just a plain disgrace! Besides the fact that it made me terribly homesick. Strange the things you miss, huh?

On one of my April visits back home, I was sitting on mama’s front porch, in a sundress and barefoot, talking to my husband in Colorado. The azaleas were blooming in splashes of pink all through the neighborhood. It was about 74 degrees and the sky was clear and blue. Birds were singing, the trees were budding, the grass was green and growing. Meanwhile, back in Colorado, it was just below freezing and was snowing. And I was going back there in just a few days.

Isn’t it strange how things can affect you? How the simple fragrance of a flower can bring home right into your mind? How different things can trigger a memory? A certain song on the radio or the smell of Old Spice aftershave can bring my daddy back. The aroma of frying jack mackerel patties or WindSong cologne makes me think of mama. The smell of Prince Albert tobacco or seeing purple morning glories in bloom brings back granddaddy. The scent of Cashmere Bouquet dusting powder or a handful of rubber fishing worms brings back granny. Don’t even ask about the worm thing!. Seeing a commercial for G.I. Joe toys makes me think of my younger brother. Construction paper and the smell of new crayons and I’m suddenly walking down the memory lane from my kids childhood. Watermelon makes me think of the fourth of July 1974 in Ohio. It made me sick that day and I still can’t eat watermelon. The sound of a slightly out of time motor with loud pipes and suddenly I’m riding with daddy in his old Ford Falcon. A fingernail file and I think of my uncle, a bell or an apple and it’s my aunt.

And the wonderful scent of Gardenias in the middle of a grocery store in Colorado took me back home, even if only for a moment.