All flowers don't smell pretty

Growing up in Smalltown, FL was kind of surreal, to me at least. I lived there thinking it was like another Mayberry....and it kind of was.

The house we lived in was an old house set up on blocks....the typical way they built houses in the early 1900's. Some of my friends would crawl under their houses and play. Me, I was always chicken and afraid spiders would get me.

It was surrounded by azalea bushes that we had to trim every year. Everyone complained about these bushes, but never got rid of them. The flowers on them were beautiful, but they grew like weeds. They bloomed whenever it started warming up. If we had a week of sort of warm weather, which was in the mid sixties and low seventies, they would bud out and the flowers would soon follow....of course that was to be followed by at least one more freeze which would end up making the blossoms die and fall off. I hated that.

My mom had a way of making the blossoms last quite a while....well she had to because I would ride my bike around the neighborhood and pluck all the flowers I saw. I remember several times Mom would get a phonecall from a neighbor complaining that I had picked all of their flowers. I couldn't help it, they were so beautiful and I had to get them and give them to Mama......she deserved pretty flowers.

Well, Mama would take a pretty bowl, sometimes a pretty floral clear, sometimes a milk-dish, fill it half full of cool water and place the blossoms to float on top. Then she would place those bowls in certain places around the house. They would stay pretty and fresh for a couple of weeks at least.

I don't remember all the kinds of flowers that I would pick. Most of them were different colors of azaleas....white, like pink, dark pink, hot pink. The only thing about them was the fact that they didn't have a smell. I could never figure out why such pretty flowers didn't smell like they looked. Some of the flowers I picked were much smaller, but smelled absolutely wonderful!

You know, Mama never got angry with me or got on to me for getting all of those flowers, even when the neighbors called. She always smiled, told me how pretty they were, and thanked me for them......

But then again......she would say, honey next time just pick the flowers close to home.....and I knew exactly what she meant.