Tropical Scotland?

The gorse is in bloom now. It is beautiful if prickly. If you stand next to gorse in bloom on a warm spring day like today, you will catch the very delicate fragrance. It smells of coconut! Not just ordinary coconut but a sweet pina colada sort of coconut. I have been known to stop my car along the side of the road in the spring to walk up to gorse in bloom to get a lungful of the smell.

Along this theme, there is a variety of camomile that grows here that is sometimes called "pineapple weed". This is because . . . . you guessed it, the odd little flowers smell of pineapple. You have to crush them to get the whole pineapple experience, just sniffing won't do.

Finally, in this misplaced smell odyssey, while dumping the lawn clippings into the chicken run, I got a very distinct whiff of banana. It happened two weeks ago and then again on Sunday. If anybody knows where this might be coming from, I would sure be interested in hearing your theory. I did check to see if there was a stray banana peel lurking in the mower. So, we've got coconut, pineapple and banana smells all here in a most unlikely location, SW Scotland.

The other thing in bloom here are the bluebells. I was looking for a good bluebell shot today while I was out at work, but I didn't find the vista I was looking for. My effort is shown above. There are a lot of bluebells on the road to Stranraer, but I am not planning to be on that road any time soon. I was just up there, naturally without the camera. The spectacular vision of all those delicate blue flowers covering a forest floors like a blue mist is really a sight to behold.