I love lilacs. I know it’s not lilac season, but it’s the season of free e-books for Scent of Lilacs. It won’t last much longer, so tell your reading friends to go get something for nothing. 🙂 And so, since I’m still fighting that deadline on my work in progress – I’m not sure I’m ever going to find those two wonderful words “the end” – I’m sharing a short bit from Scent of Lilacs. I did find the end of that book!
This is where lilacs are first introduced into the story as Jocie’s favorite flower scent. Jocie and her dad and Aunt Love are coming home after Jocie’s dad gave a trial sermon to see if the church would ask him to be their pastor. David has given his testimony to the church which included how he was called to preach. But Jocie, who loves the story, wants him to tell it again on their drive home. So here goes.
“You’ve heard it a hundred times, Jocie. You just heard it again tonight.”
“You didn’t tell the church how it felt. You just told them it happened. You were in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean. The enemy ships were feeling through the waters to find you so they could blow you up. Your job was to tell where the enemy ships were so you could sneak up on them and blow them up first. It was war. Ships went down. Submarines took hits. People died.” Jocie stopped and squeezed her father’s shoulder. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Me too,” David said. “I did tell it a little bit better than that tonight, didn’t I?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m doing a Reader’s Digest version.” She took a breath and went on. “You were more afraid of getting hit and not being able to get back to the top than of being blown up. One night when the sonar was going crazy, God showed up and let you know he was in control and that he had plans for you back in Hollyhill, so you weren’t going to end up shark food.”
Aunt Love roused up with a shudder. “Heavenly days, child. You shouldn’t talk about your father being shark food.”
“I shouldn’t, should I? That was awful,” Jocie said. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay.” David laughe
d. “I didn’t end up shark food, and the image does give the story a certain dramatic flair. Maybe I’ll throw that in the next time I tell the story.”
“What did happen first?” Jocie asked.
“I smelled locust blooms.”
“Locust blooms?” Jocie said.
“One of the sweetest scents on earth,” Aunt Love said.
“Lilacs are better,” Jocie said.
~~
And that’s where the name of the story showed up first.
This Week’s Winner is….
Mary H. is my winner this week. She’ll get her choice of one of my books. I’ve sent Mary an e-mail. But the giveaway continues. I’ll give away another book next Sunday. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post and/or Wednesday’s post. Each comment on a new post gets you another entry into the drawing. You must be 18 to enter, but you don’t have to buy anything or do anything other than comment to enter.
So how about you tell me which flower you think has the best scent? I’ve got a gardenia plant this year and those blooms smell pretty good, but what flower tickles your nose in all the right ways?
Comments 43
thank you so much Ann! news of my win couldn’t have come at a better time! I chose Murder Comes by Mail as my prize…can’t wait to share it with all of you! lost my mama 30 years ago today…she is the one who made me love to read so much…was never without a book at her side…wish she was here to share this one with me…I will be reading it with her looking over my shoulder!
oh yeah…my favorite flowers are begonias! lol
Author
That’s a sweet thought, Mary, to think about your mom watching over your shoulder as you read. My mother loved to read too, but when I was a kid, she didn’t have much free time since we lived on a farm with lots of chores. Later in life, she read many books. Her parents loved reading too and I used that for the parents in my Rosey Corner books. Made them both great readers. My grandmother once told me that her best times were when she and my grandfather were sitting together and reading.
My favorite scented flower is Freesia!! They’re so pretty, too 🙂
Author
Again, I’m going to have to check out these Freesias. They sound great, Susan, but if I’ve seen them, I didn’t know what they were called.
Hyacinths are probably my favorite. I usually buy some from a grocery store when winter is still hanging on here in upstate New York. The scent of the hyacinths cheer my up and help me to remember that spring really will come eventually. One of my daughters knows as soon as she opens the front door that I have hyacinths on the kitchen table and she runs in to see what she can already smell.
Author
That’s neat about your daughter sniffing those hyacinths before she sees them, Carol. I think flowers in the early spring do cheer us up and help us make it through the last gray days of winter and in upstate New York, you have a longer wait for those spring days that we do down here in KY. Hyacinths are beautiful flowers.
I like gardenias and lilacs, but I think my very favorite is freesias!
Author
I’m going to have to look up freesias, Margaret. If they have a better scent than lilacs and gardenias, I need to take a sniff. 🙂
Any kind of purple flower is my favorite,Ann. 🙂
Author
Purple is your color, Emily. Last year I did a fun thing on my Facebook author page and tried to find a different purple flower every day when I took a walk. I had fun with it. Cheated a few times like the time I took a picture of my neighbor’s newly purchased hotrod purple truck. A flower for him, for sure.
Lilacs and wisteria are some of my favorites. Roses, too, if they are growing in a garden. Roses from a florist have no scent anymore!
I have read the Josie series and have told you prior to this that I hated to see them come to an end!
God bless you
Author
Thanks, Karen. I’ve had others say they’d like a new Hollyhill story. Maybe someday. And you’re right about those roses. The ones you buy are lovely but they don’t have a good scent.
I think honeysuckle is my favorite smell in flowers. I also like hyacinths, lily of the valley and roses.
Author
All with heavenly scents, Brenda. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that hyacinths have that much of a scent, but I’m going to check that out now. Mom used to have a hyacinth and my sister has one now. I’ll give it the sniff test.
Karen G. I transplanted some lilacs in North Dakota. I just took a small 2 foot high clump from the side of a bigger bush and planted it and kept it watered. 15 Years later, when my son went to the same college they were still doing very well!
Author
That’s how I started mine over 40 years ago, Paula.
I love Lilacs! I wish I had some growing in my yard but I don’t know where to get some to start. I love lilacs so much that I remember as a teenager, Avon had perfume that smelled like lilacs. It was in a tube like chapstick. I worn so much of it and too much that friends were saying I smelled like a funeral parlor. Wish I still had some.
Author
I’ve never seen lilacs in a funeral parlor, Karen. Glad their remark didn’t make you start not liking lilacs. I seem to remember when they had perfume like that in a tube. Fun remembering things like that. Around here you can still buy lilac bushes at the greenhouses, but they aren’t always the old fashioned ones. Here in KY you just have to find somebody who has a bush and ask them if you can dig up a start from it. That’s how I got my lilacs.
I love that book! It was so good meeting Jocie and her family.
Author
That’s so fun to read, Ola. I’m so glad you like Jocie and family and friends. I had a good time writing their stories.
I love the scent of “Lily of the Valley”. The scent was one of the first flowers I smelled & it has such a clean, relaxing scent. The flowers aren’t very large.
Author
They are lovely flowers, Betty, and will spread when they are in a good locations. I need to dig some up from my son’s flowerbed and start some in my yard. My mother-in-law had some too.
I love lilacs. We had a bush in the back yard as a child. The neighbors across the street had about three acres and lilacs were all around the perimeter of their property! We also had them up in North Dakota in Bible School and in the yard at our parsonage in Wisconsin. And in St Louis. For a tie favorite is Lily of the Valley, also around the house among the ferns when I was a child. I am always looking for perfume that scent! That plumeria mentioned is great, too.
Author
My mother used to have a bottle of perfume called Lily of the Valley with a picture of the flower on the front, Paula. My son has those in one of his flowerbeds now. Sounds as if you have many memories of beautifully scented flowers at different locations.
Honeysuckle, nothing beats it in my book!!!! Takes me back to playing on the farm with my sister.
Author
I’m right there with you, Lisa. Dad hated honeysuckle vines because they’d grow up on his fences, but I always loved the plant. Now, I don’t have that same feeling for the trees that have blooms that resemble honeysuckle. They are invasive and wicked as they try to take over a woods and kill out all the other trees.
Yellow jasmine wild flowers and lilacs and gardenia….are my favorites. I really should plant a gardenia bush, I’ve just never thought about it. The others grow wild in my woods.
Author
I’d never had any luck with gardenia prior to this year, so when my husband brought in the plant, I’m going, oh now, I’ll kill it for sure. Then I sat it outside and it’s bloomed like crazy. On the really hot days, I watered it twice a day. I thought I might drown it, but it seemed to like the water and the heat.
I love Lilac’s, the flower, the fragrance and the childhood memories when I see a lilac bush. I now live in Florida and there are no lilacs! One other fragrance I love is Night Blooming Jasmine, I love going out at night and smelling them.
wfnren at aol dot com
Author
Lilacs just don’t do well down south, Wendy. My daughter misses them in SC although there are many other beautiful flowers there. She has jasmine there, but I don’t know if it’s night blooming. I have a lot of childhood memories connected to lilac bushes too. Fun.
One of my favorite ( & I have several favorites) is the plumeria flower. We learned about these beautiful flowers while living in Hawaii- which was a huge blessing from God! They also beautiful, fragrant flower leis! They come several colors but my favorite is deep pink with pale yellow as a close second!!!
Author
Sounds wonderful, Betsy. Both the flower and the Hawaiian trip. Beautiful and fragrant leis sound good.
It’s hard to name a favorite, I love the smell of so many! I love the smell of roses, lilacs, moon flowers, honeysuckle, 4 o’clocks, but not marigolds or zinnias, they’re meant to help repel bugs!
Author
Connie, I’m going out and sniff my 4 o’clock tonight. I didn’t know they had much of a scent. I did know about the others. Honeysuckle was one of my favorites when I was a kid. Now my grandkids like to pull out the stem of the bloom and catch that drop of liquid sweetness inside the bloom on their tongues. I knew marigold were supposed to bug repellents, but not zinnias. They aren’t repelling the Japanese beetles.
My sense of smell is a thing of the past. I guess it’s all the mess I take, but I remember how fragrant the lilac were !
Author
Ahh, at least you have the memory of their delightful scent, Evelyn. Sorry you’ve lost your sense of smell. They say that takes away some of the pleasure of food too.
It is lilacs for me Ann. And the stories of Josie are my favorites!!
Author
Hi, Linda. Fun that you think Jocie’s stories are your favorites. I had fun writing about her and her family and friends. She agrees with you on those lilacs for sure.
I got the free book and I am looking forward to reading it.
Author
Thanks for downloading the free book, Linda. I hope you’ll enjoy Jocie’s story.