28 Feb Space Invaders! Creeping Up on a Blooming Jasmine Vine

Scent-wise, white flowers are like the older, more, um, experienced sisters of the floral world. Their fragrance is sweet but with an extra fleshy note, evident in the sultry auras of tuberose, gardenia and jasmine.

The scent just feels extra…familiar. This quality comes from indole, an aromatic organic compound found in white flowers like the abovementioned — and found in another thing we can’t mention here.

Inside our garden, we don’t get our white-flower fix until the late spring, when our orange tree starts blooming. Luckily, our neighbor’s Jasminum polyanthum is in full bloom, white star-shaped flowers with fuchsia bulbs and invasive, climbing vines. The jasmine is now straddling our fence and spreading out across our shared diamond-shaped trellis. C has a great view of it from her office window. The aroma? Candied and heavy and sublime and personal, kind of like a sweaty angel.

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