The Smell of Spring

"Scents bring memories, and many memories bring nostalgic pleasure. We would be wise to plan for this when we plant a garden."
- Thalassa Cruso, To Everything There is a Season, 1973

"The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking. Immediately at the moment of perception, you can feel the mind going to work, sending the odor around from place to place, setting off complex repertories through the brain, polling one center after another for signs of recognition, for old memories and old connection. "
- Lewis Thomas

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."
- Diane Ackerman

Rhododendron's are especially prevalent in our new home town of Vancouver, Washington.  I would not call the Rhododendron plants that I have seen as having a strong fragrance, but mostly pleasing.