The variable nature of our weather this season has many of us in a schizophrenic dance. Hot and sunny one day, cold and rainy the next, then right back up again a few hours later. It’s too extreme, too wild, too wide-ranging for those of us whose moods depend on some barometric stability. At such moments of meteorological oscillation, I find it best to dip into a stalwart sign of a season, in this instance summer, and focus on a memory or a feeling or the vague stirrings of a similar brush with the sublime.
These admittedly non-descript and rather ho-hum photos show off, as much as possible, the little buds of the Linden tree – an inconspicuous tree that is a large part of city landscaping, and whose unassuming flowers go largely unnoticed except when in bloom. Even then, only the perfume gets noticed, not the flowers themselves. In truth, it took me several years to figure out what the sweet scent in the air at this time of the year was. I was looking for something bold and bright and colorful, something like a lily or rose or lilac that would have the power and potency to fill the air with such fine fragrance.
It was a lesson in judging a book by its cover. Or a tree by its perfume. Or vice versa. I’m mixing metaphors and getting all anthropomorphic now, which means it’s time to wind up this quick pre-summer post.
Go out and find a linden tree before the ants get there.
