These are jasmine. What sort of jasmine I have no idea. Wikipedia reports about 200 species. What I do know for sure is that I smelled them at least thirty yards before I found them. They were on the side and toward the back of a local city building. Again, according to Wikipedia, “Jasmines are widely cultivated for the characteristic fragrance of their flowers.” Anyone who has ever smelled jasmine knows the smell of jasmine. It’s not something one easily forgets.

My father hated jasmine. In all his landscape designs he only used it once. He had a client with a large expensive house under construction who gave him a free hand to do anything he wanted, except that he had a list of flowering plants that he wanted outside certain windows and as the centerpiece of a number of patios. Night blooming jasmine he specified for the master bedroom patio. My father tried to talk him out of it, but he was set on the idea. The job ended with all the right flowers in all the right places, and not one single flower in the entire front yard. My father disliked flowers in general, something that always troubled me.

It’s hard to see things clearly when you’re too close to them. It occurred to me not long ago that he disliked flowers not because they weren’t beautiful, but because he disliked anything that took away from him at the center. He wanted people to see his landscaping job, not posies, as he called them. The more they saw posies, the less they saw him. I really believe that was the reason. He was almost dangerously egotistical, and had absolutely no insight into self.

The worst thing of all were those damned night blooming jasmines. Who the hell would want night blooming jasmine outside his bedroom?

There is, of course, nothing that equals the aroma of night blooming jasmine. But once again I refer back to Wikipedia. Jasmine is related to the olive. Night blooming jasmine is related to the potato. In fact, it’s only called jasmine because it smells like jasmine. Not because it actually is. If I could package the scent of these tiny flowers and post it on the internet, perhaps someone could tell me what sort of jasmine it is, or if in fact it is jasmine at all. What I can tell you without reservation, however, is that it smells delicious.