Sign of Spring

photos via designsponge

My favorite flower has to be jasmine. One of my dearest friends has a thick vine of jasmine growing on her patio. Most of the time it just looks like healthy greenery. But about two weeks out of the year it turns a mushroom cloud of awesome. There are thousands of tiny white flowers, and thousands of long pink buds. All I can do is bring handfuls of blooms to my face and breathe. 

I'd live out on her patio those two weeks if she'd let me. Inevitably, when I come over just a few days after the flower explosion, the vine is back to being mostly green while the ground is covered with wilted florets. Let's just say that there have been years when I've cried over this tragedy.

The good news is that there is some variety of jasmine that grows in Southern California through most of spring and summer. The season starts right about now. (I remember it would be right around Winter quarter finals week when I'd smell the first signs of jasmine in the evening air which made me want to quit school and take up evening-walking as a profession.) They're popping up all over the place, and I am sporadically running off to bury my face in bunches of these beautiful flowers.

PS. And what's this? Oh, just a wedding dress made out of jasmine flowers. I die.