DAY 3  of a Seven Day Bouquet, Pink Mimosa.

“By a close observer I do not mean a minute, cold-blooded specialist — “a fingering slave, one who would peep and botanize upon his mother’s grave,” — but a man who looks closely and steadily at nature, and notes the individual features of tree and rock and field, and allows no subtile flavor of the night or day, of the place and the season, to escape him. His senses are so delicate that in his evening walk he feels the warm and the cool streaks in the air, his nose detects the most fugitive odors, his ears the most furtive sounds.” John Burroughs.

Arrival of your Day 3 bouquet, flower delivery from a single plant — Pink Mimosa, Mimosa borealis.

In the quote above, I’m not sure if John Burroughs uses the descriptor of odors as “fugitive” to mean odors that escape and evade or odors that are momentary and passing, so I’m taking it as the latter and imagining the transitory whiff that is inescapable when the pink mimosas bloom. 

Whether a close observer or a cold-blooded specialist, there is no way not to be alive to the impression of the perfume imparting from this plant! 

It smells incredible. 

And what does incredible smell like? 

That’s the challenge of describing the scent of pink mimosa because pink mimosa smells like no other fragrance I am familiar with. It is sweet-smelling and smells, well, pink! 

Every spring I am convinced a perfumer is missing out by not bottling this floral scent. 

And because we link smells to our memories, here is why I used the word “whiff” when referencing this fugitive odor. 

A whiff to me is that quick puff of a smell that catches you off-guard. 

We drive around the ranch in an open utility vehicle and when mimosas are blooming (whether right in front of you or twenty yards off the road and down a slope unseen) the smell smacks you squarely, off and on, as you drive along passing each plant. 

The hit is not like the annoying sales clerk in the cosmetic aisle who spritzes smells that make me sneeze before I can say no thank you. 

The hit is more like a collision with love — powerful yet tender and impossible to describe to someone who has never felt it. 

But since I know it, I instantly recognize it — even if hidden or far apart — both love and the smell of pink mimosa. 

On a recent walk I was headed down a slope on a far corner of the property seldom explored. The area is thick with cedar and cedar was the predominate smell, until it wasn’t. The hit came square but it was a few minutes later before a blush appeared. A singular mature pink mimosa growing between the cedars was my enchanting gift for the day.

For those who have never smelled mimosa, know it is potent and wonderful. Please accept that your bouquet today is only half a gift. The other half arrives when you meet a mimosa in person.

Pink mimosas are here and there around the ranch, thus the off and on whiffs as I drive the hilltops.

Some bushes are low, browsed by wildlife, and other bushes are over six feet tall and equally sprawled wide.

A mimosa bush in it’s prime has a range of pink colored blooms, and over time they fade to a light blush pink. 

The branches are twiggy and messy and thorny

and along them are leaves composed of little oval leaflets

and clusters of half inch globe flowers

in all stages of blooming.

The flowers are fascinatingly intricate up close at each stage of bloom.

Truly art.

 

Tomorrow is Day 4 of your bouquet, a white flower day!