Friday, March 26, 2010

You Can Tell It's March

Not because it's Final Four basketball season.  Not because people are eating corned beef and cabbage.  Not because everyone wears green on one day of the year.  Nope, I can tell it's March because I am able to drive with my windows down and get the greatest "scentsation" up my nose!

When I first moved out to my little "town" back in 2001, it was covered with these...
Yes, orange groves.  They were all over.  Every year, in March, you could smell this...
The smell was phenomenal.  I LOVED it.  I looked forward to March evenings every year.  It was like a drug.  I couldn't get enough.  I wanted to smell it all the time.  But, alas, if I could smell it all the time, it wouldn't be special anymore. 

Now, the orange groves are all gone out here in our "fastest growing city in Arizona" (yes, we went from 30,000 people when I moved here to well over 100,000 in just 7 years).  It's sad.  There are houses and stores and restaurants all in their places now.

But, tonight, as I was driving down Bell Road toward home, I had the windows in my truck down and all of a sudden I could smell it...the luscious, fragrant, potent, delicious scent of fresh orange blossoms in the night air.  It was incredible and overcame my senses.  I wanted to just stop my truck right in the middle of the road and take it all in.  Oh goodness, what a perfect scent.  Thank you, Lord, for making this incredible smell for us!

I wish I had SMELL-O-VISION right now...

1 comment:

Casey Lu said...

I can smell it too! Can you believe that most of the North Peoria, Surprise, and El Mirage when I was little and my grandparents lived out here were orange groves. Too bad they are all gone!