What is this?

These gloriously lovely blossoms grow from a vine in my yard (it is as thick as my wrist and twists about each tree). This time each year, it bursts forth in these heavy-hanging flowers that bear a heady perfume of jasmine and lilac. It is similar to the lilacs of my homeland but is a different thing in its growth and form.

The riotous exuberance of the South’s flora entrances me (and takes me back to my other home, HopeTown, Bahamas). Today we bought our tomato and green pepper plants and tomorrow is my favourite day - the planting of the patio pots. I confess, though, that I do miss the sweet things that thrived in my gardens in Ontario - the bee balm, yarrow, lobelia, gloxinia, black-eyed Susans, shy crocuses and others - but at least impatiens enjoy it here and bloom well into October. What I always thought of as indoor plants are the ones that hang outdoors here: Boston ferns, spider plants, English ivy and philodendron. They flourish and grow to almost mutant size.

I will never, ever enter a greenhouse or thrust my hands into loamy soil without missing my Mum and Grandma with an ache that brings tears to my eyes. Each year we'd head out to the Belgium greenhouses between Guelph and Kitchener and go into raptures over the living beauty. When I think of these amazing women (as I do each day) I think of them both on their knees in the garden, La Boheme pouring from the stereo and the lullaby of their voices as they murmured encouraging words to the fragile "beings" that they so loved.

Right now all of the windows are full open and the temps between 75 and 80. How I wish that it would stay this way, but I know that a few weeks from now the A/C will have to be on. Potter the Possum sits atop the gazebo each night, gazing in at us, and then he begins his nightly work of consuming the bugs in the yard.

A friend on FaceBook has just informed me that the vine/flower is Wisteria. So now I add that to the list of my yard’s inhabitants.