The lemon flower is sweet

Right now the garden is really, really smelling good, especially at night. The aforementioned Casablancas, of course, with the added kick of the sweet peas still climbing on them. It's a little hot for the Angel's trumpet, but the relatively few flowers it does have are still cranking out the fragrance as soon as the sun goes down. The Gardenia is flowering like a madman despite continuing to look like shit (I have a new theory about too much sun; the lower leaves are considerably bigger and greener). The lemon tree flowers year-round, but it tends to come in waves, and this is a big one. You need a critical mass to get a serious lemon-scented yard.

So the sequence, from the car to the patio (with a detour to procure the Miracle of Summer) goes: gardenia, (lavender interlude), lemon, lily, sweet pea, lemon, (rose interlude if you really concentrate), lemon, Angel's trumpet. This may sound a little much, but it goes perfectly with a cigarette. Seriously, nothing is overpowering unless you get too close.

Lemon flowers are weird, but I couldn't discover much about their morphology on the internets. The pistils look like a solid cylindrical curtain around the stamen that has just shredded and sprouted anthers at the tips. It's hard to describe, but if you look at the original size of the picture above on flickr, you can get a sense of it.

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I'm going far away from the world of evergreen subtropicals, and, for that matter, computers. It will be quiet here for a few weeks. However, there are rumors that my unexcited co-conspirator may resurface here and let us know how her garden grows. She is a resourceful gardener, a charming companion, an excellent writer, and, most importantly, extremely hott (that's her hugging Jeff Koons's Puppy in the banner), so you probably want to check in on her.