Spring smells like Piss

I know you think I'm joking - but I'm not. When did that happen?

Where I live, March brings in an explosion of flowers - on trees, on bushes, in beds... everywhere you look, things are blooming.

Then towards the end of March, we became convinced that some cat had been staking out territory in our front yard. When ZBoy started taking the bus again, I realize that the same "cat" has pretty much staked out our entire neighborhood. It wasn't until I passed by an azalea bush that had brown droopy blooms on it that I realized it was the FLOWERS that smelled like piss. As soon as they're past their peak and begin fading, it starts. And it stays until the last dead bloom has dried up or blown away.

Having lived here for most of my life, I wondered why I'd never noticed this before.

I guess as a kid, you grow up with something and you don't really think about it. All I knew then was that Japanese magnolia blossoms smelled awful (sweet rotten smell) when the blossoms fell to the ground. And that kumquats rotting was even worse.

Then I moved away to OKC and by the time I came back, I was a smoker. No sense of smell anymore. Then I moved to Wakulla - mostly sandy ground doesn't support the blooming plants that better soil does, so it was never an issue. The dogwoods would drop their flowers, but they usually blew away before smell became an issue. Just before we moved to town, I quit smoking and my sense of smell came back.

We moved into that house we rented for a year next to the college boys and it ALWAYS smelled like piss - and I thought it was the college kids who seemed to think the street was a toilet (and the bushes, and the rose beds, and the driveway, and the...).

Guess not.

I love spring, but I do not care for this aspect of it. I never thought I'd say this, but bring on summer!!!!