The Pastor and I had an ongoing argument this afternoon - actually, it goes back some months - about the lack of lilac bushes around the rectory.
I grew up with three lilac bushes right outside of our house, almost strategically placed so as to fill the entire house with the heavenly aroma throughout the spring and summer months whenver the windows were left open. It is a scent I miss greatly.
Lately, I have been asking to plant a lilac bush or two - maybe even seven - underneath windows in rooms that I spend a greater amount of time.
The Pastor has been insisting most strongly all afternoon that there is already a lilac bush underneath the kitchen window, and that it has been there for some years now.
I argued back with an emphatic "NO!" on the simple grounds that I have never smelled the scent of lilac in the rectory. If you grew up with the scent, it is not one that is missed or forgotten.
Our cook, for her part, believing the word of the Pastor, suggested it was a newer, non-smelling, lilac, to which the Pastor seemed to give his approval.
Only moments ago, the Pastor called the housekeeper to his office - she was already here cleaning the parish offices - to ask her about the plant in question. It was she who planted it in the first place.
She stated it is indeed not a lilac, but a forsythia. (It so happens that she, too, grew up with lilacs all around her house.)
Vicar - 1. Pastor - 0.
Could the housekeeper perhaps have meant wisteria, which indeed looks like lilac but doesn't smell the same?
ReplyDeleteForsythia is yellow, at least where I come from....
It sounds as if your pastor's favorite poem might be "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."
I was unfamiliar with Whitman's poem so I looked it up. It's rather nice. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteNot that you keep score.....
ReplyDeleteAll in good fun :c]
ReplyDeleteThe Pastor and I have a great relationship. There is much teasing and laughing often in the office. He is a good man, indeed.
I figured that you must get along or you wouldn't have written such a post.
ReplyDeleteLilacs are my favorite. The smell always reminds me of my grandmother's garden. That and Marie Avinov's memoirs describing her husband's family home in Russia. It was completely surrounded by hundred year old lilac bushes. In the spring, the smell was so strong they had to keep some of the windows shut. At least that's how it was until, in her words, "the liberated masses burned it."
ReplyDeleteStupid liberated masses...
ReplyDeleteNow you're sounding like me. You'd best watch that.
ReplyDeleteThere's a compliment if ever I heard one! Thanks!
ReplyDelete