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Lavender

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I grew lavender in Florida. The world is a more beautiful place for the fragrance of lavender.

When we grew herbs in Florida, I would walk out in the garden every morning and run my hands through the lavender plants to release their perfume. In the coolness of dewy mornings it was a lovely fragrance – how to describe scents? Olfaction is the hardest sense to write. Lavender is herby and floral and evergreen, it is soft wood; it is both warm and cool like its flowers’ colors, light and silvery like its leaves.

Other times of day, when I worked in the garden, I’d brush against its fuzzy blue green needles to smell it again: with my forearm while I dug holes, with my shin as I walked by, with my shoulder when I crouched to investigate leaf bottoms, searching for butterfly eggs. By the end of summer, it was sometimes tall enough that I would brush it with my hip and a warm current of lavender fragrance would drift up and make me stop to breathe it in.

The best part of growing my own, and why I can’t wait to move and start cultivating it again, is that when it is in bloom, and even when it isn’t, we can have bouquets of lavender in our house. I’ll cut sprigs and spears and stems laden with tiny purple flowers, and I’ll fill glass jars with water, and I will place lavender nosegays in every room: on the dining and coffee tables, on the bar, on bright window sills, and best of all, on bedside tables, where we’ll drift to sleep breathing one of the loveliest scents of the earth.

Photo credit: A little arrangement by Lotte Grønkjær

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.

10 thoughts on “Lavender”

  1. I love Lavender! I have pots of it blooming all over my yard and patio right now. I love the fragrance floating in the breeze and the sweet purple heads reaching up to catch the morning sun. 🙂 I live in SC on the coast. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Intoxicating. Your craft of description makes me want to try to grow my own; or at least buy some … soon. Just a gentle nudge: First word, second paragraph … needs your attention.
    A fragrant and lovely post!

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  3. I love the smell of lavender, and found it particularly soothing if I had ‘one of my heads’ when I suffered from migraines many years ago. My grandfather’s front path was lined with it on both sides, and I would pick some to lace with ribbon for my closet every year.

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  4. The wealth of the fragrance is in the soil as delivered by the soil giver…. nice Angela Badgley.

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  5. I love lavender in everything. I’ve had it in lemonade, honey, in scones, candles. I spray it in my bedroom on my pillow at night for good sleep. I love what it can do. But I sure don’t have such sweet memories of it that you have. Wonderful post.

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  8. This writing idea has my attention! The growing of abundant lavender in the family garden has been a perfume opportunity. I am pleased to read how the abundance of lavender was then to be found in various containers in your home. The reader can only imagine their fragrance. I am also intrigued by the different varieties of lavender.

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