It was June, the very end of the school year.  I was taking the kids to the bus stop that morning and upon opening the front door, a waft of perfumed air drifted by me.  It was such a beautiful scent that for a moment it stopped my progression and I just stood there inhaling it.  “Wow! What’s that smell?” Then it was gone.

We drove down the dirt driveway, across a highway and down another dirt road through the woods until we reached the access road where the bus was.  I had the car windows open; the scent was drifting in and out.  Looking back and forth on the road, I could not locate the source.  After the bus arrived and the precious cargo was shipped off to school, I went back up to the house, stepped out of the car, and there it was again.  I was determined to find it before I had to leave for work.

A thorough search was done around the back of the house, but it was not coming from my garden.  Heading down the drive again, I kept stopping to sniff the air like an animal.  The aroma would come and go; almost like a genie from a bottle, I could imagine swirls and tendrils of the elusive scent, invisibly uncurling.  Down the hill and out to the road again, I started walking alongside the mowed sides of the highway –  and suddenly,  there it was – wild roses.  Shrubs and shrubs and shrubs of white, wild, summer roses (Multiflora  Rose, R. multiflora).  I just stood there inhaling them. On the side of the road, a piece of heaven. I took a few sprigs with me and kept sniffing them the entire ride to work.  When I arrived at work, I discovered that these roses are everywhere.

They come in late spring for a short while, and then they are gone.   An annual treat to look forward to, I can barely get enough of their intoxication. Have you smelled them?  I am drunk on the heady scent of the wild summer roses of June.