Tiny Thing = Big Joy (Part Five)

If you have never smelled a flowering Sweet Olive shrub then you have missed out on one of the great joys of life. We have about 20 of them growing along our back property line and the smell this morning was truly intoxicating! The shrubs grow large and are evergreen so we used them as a sight barrier along our back fence - our neighbors apparently have something against trees and they cut down virtually every tree in their yard so we were looking right in their back door! The flowers on the sweet olive are very insignificant looking and usually hard to see. You can walk close to them and not be able to tell where that divine fragrance is coming from because the flowers are so small and hide inside the leaves. Not this year!!! They are covered in blooms. The fragrance is delicate, not over-powering, but still very noticeable especially in the early morning or early evening. The picture below may give you some idea of how large the shrubs are in comparison to the flowers, but it can't convey to you that wonderful, gloriously soft but totally mind-boggling smell



Joy Journal: My first almost-finished watercolor painting!