The Smell of Spring

It's been spring in New Orleans for quite a few weeks now, and as much as I love fall, I think this must be my favorite season.   Yes, spring is a feast for the eyes, but it's really the smell of spring that gets me.  I adore stopping along my route to school in the morning to bury my nose in a lovely gardenia, and inhaling the wonderful smell of jasmine as I ride my bike home from the library at night.  There's hardly anything in the world better than the feel of the cool night air with the full moon above and the wonderful smell of flowers.  

As I'm writing this I realize that all too often we don't stop and smell the roses.  Quite literally, I mean.  Most Americans drive to work, and in doing so they miss out on the wonderful sensory pleasures that spring time assaults you with.  We really are less for it.  Living in New Orleans, a city that's so easy to get around without a car, really makes me see how backwards being car dependent really is.  Until you've truly lived where you only need a car to go to the grocery store, it's hard to understand what a burden a car really is and how much you miss out on by being confined to a car.  

Ever since my trip to Europe last summer roses have captivated me.  Everywhere you turned, and especially in Copenhagen and Amsterdam, there seemed to be rose bushes climbing trellises and dripping over fences.  It was absolutely beautiful.  My experience with roses before then was limited to cut roses in a bouquet - still beautiful, but a little cliché.  Now I understand the beauty of rose bushes and I want nothing more than to one day have a garden filled with roses and other plants.  Just around the corner from me, is a wonderful house with a wrap around porch, a giant oak, and a lawn teeming with rose bushes.  In other words, my dream house.