i LOVE the first scent of spring, lilacs!

I love a number of flowers... peonies, roses, zinnias, sweet peas, magnolias but hands down, lilacs are my favorite scent.  There's nothing quite like it.  And at this time of the year it's the first fragrance in my gardens.

This lilac bush was probably what excited me the most when we were "discovering" all the old plantings here at Red Gate Farm nine years ago.  As someone who failed to have one single lilac on my bush at my last home, I was thrilled when this one was covered in blooms that first spring.

Our weather last week was fabulous and the lilac really busted out.  We actually hit 80 degrees on Thursday and that heat meant you could smell the lilac when you walked out the back door... and believe me, in this part of the world there's certainly no guarantee of warm days when the lilac is blooming so I enjoyed every moment!

I headed out, camera in hand, every evening and day over the last week or so to take many, many lilac photos... ok, I'll admit to around 200 if you really want to know.

But with a relatively short window of opportunity, well who could blame me?

My lilac has a pinky, rosy hue when it first starts to bloom that quickly turns into a pretty shade of lavender.

I think I got every angle of this bush...

Although this one is a favorite.  Nothing says country like a lilac, a barn and a couple of antique farm trucks.

And those of you with a keen eye may have noticed that some of "the lawn" isn't quite as green as usual for the end of April - beginning of May....

In fact, it looks a lot more like August, without irrigation of any kind...

This was one of two tractors my husband ran through the front lawn with on Saturday...

What looked like this a couple of weeks ago...

Looked like this last Thursday...

And now like this...

Here's hoping the "after" photo isn't too long in the making!

And fortunately for me, I had already taken those 200 pictures of my lilac BEFORE the big dig happened.

And I brought a few inside which currently provides a much cleaner back drop...

So how about you... what's your favorite scent from the garden?

linking up to

Elizabeth & Co

May Garden Party