Much Needed Fragrance

Read a grant.  Read another grant.  Yep, you guessed it, read  yet another grant.  Work on writing a grant...add a few sentences to the section on zooxanthellae as coral symbionts.  Delete a few other sentences.  Decide you don't know nearly enough to write what you're writing, so go back to Web of Science and do a literature search.  Save the useful pdfs, and take them home to read later. 

Read yet another grant.  They're all beginning to blend together - yours, mine, theirs.  Gripe on the phone with a friend about how swamped you are.  Yes, you're a virtual blackwater swamp - free of mosquitos and filled with lots of eyes glowing in the darkness.  All eyes quietly asking "are you done with those grants yet?" 

Go back to the first grant of the day, and take some notes.  Remember something that you don't want to forget about the grant you're writing - go and add it to the current draft.  E-mail your coral colleague in Puerto Rico back because you're still undecided about what coral species to focus the proposal on - what are his thoughts? 

Stop for a minute, walk out onto the deck, and ponder how in the hell you're going to get everything done.

But in the garden, the tea olive (Osmanthus fragrans) is in bloom.  Tonight, walking out on the deck, I could smell the familiar and wonderful fragrance - screaming that summer is finally over, to come back outside, to spend a little time sitting on the teak folding chair at the small table and smell ME.  Shortly after moving to Charleston, during one of my first evening walks downtown - I smelled the most incredible fragrance that I didn't recognize - and soon thereafter I discovered that it was tea olive.  Often more shrub-like - the one that I smelled for the first time looked more like a small evergreen tree (not shrub-like at all) - and so I purchased a small one (about 1' tall).  Now, 12 years later, it's about 15' tall and tree-like.  Birds nest in it each spring, and when it's in bloom, my garden is filled with it's wonderful fragrance.

Take a few deep breaths.  Go back inside.  Print out the next grant to review.   

Comments

[JanetLee]

Thanks Pam! I'd completely forgotten about tea olives. I now have one adorning the back porch steps, awaiting planting.

[Pam]

JanetLee: Get that tea olive planted! They're just so wonderful.

[Annie in Austin]

Is this also called Sweet Olive?? I can't find the tag anymore, but think that's how it was sold to me. I grew it in a pot for a few years, then planted it near the patio. Mine doesn't start blooming this early in the year, but makes lovely fragrant flowers from Thanksgiving off-and-on through early spring.

Annie

[Pam]

Yes - I think sweet olive is another name for the same shrub/tree. In this part of the world, I generally hear tea olive - perhaps sweet olive is a Texas thing. Mine blooms from now until sometime in the spring.

[Abel Pharmboy]

Pam, we're only about 200 miles north of you and our Osmanthus just bloomed as well. invested in a 3-footer 2 years ago and it's almost 5 feet now. Agreed that there is nothing like that lovely fragrance. I'll bet Charleston is spectacular this time of year.

[Pam]

A.P.: Welcome! Yes, Charleston's not too bad this time of year (it's my favorite time here) - I'm glad that your Osmanthus is blooming (they only get bigger and better!).

[William Newton]

Does anyone know how or if you can force a sweet olive to bloom. It would be nice to have the fragrence a lot longer.