Living in Dryden

Lilac Season and Aromas

by David Makar
for Living in Dryden

This evening I had a slice of pizza from Pizza Aroma (Green and Cayuga Street in the city of Ithaca) for a late in the night dinner. While the slice (Hawaiian - ham and pineapple, the pineapple because it is naturally there, the ham because Captain Cook left lots of pigs on the island when he "found" it) was reheating I wandered next door to Sam's Wine and Spirits. Sam's is a small locally owned business, owned by Dryden resident Doris Nitsios. Doris' late husband Sam owned Sam's as well as the Candlelight Inn in the village of Dryden. When I walked by on my way into Pizza Aroma I saw Doris talking to the manager of Sam's.

Doris brought me up to date on the fun nitty, gritty details of owning a bed and breakfast in Tompkins County - especially on graduation weekend. I thought about today's Ithaca Journal article about B&B's in the area. See it here.

When I made it back to my house I enjoyed my dinner while reading through this week's Dryden Courier. I read an opinion article fellow town board member Mary Ann Sumner submitted about the Cayuga Press Loan. I hope Mary Ann post a copy of it on her Five Wells blog or the Dryden Democrats blog. I also noticed at the end of Matt Cooper's Around Dryden column a request for Lilac locations.

Now that my own lilacs have come back into bloom, I've noticed lilacs everywhere I go. Earlier today I was at Lee Ginenthal's house, he's a customer of 544 Productions and his business is Der Rosenmeister - he's a purveyor of antique and modern roses (his site is here: http://www.derrosenmeister.com/). I asked Lee a lot of questions about roses and owning a nursery, but ended with a question about the colors of Lilacs. They range from white to light purple to dark purple.

I will end with a couple final notes, first, here is a picture of my own lilacs from my yard last week, just in case Matt Cooper can't find any real ones around - here's a virtual lilac. You can almost smell the aroma.



Finally, here's a long poem from last week's writer's almanac that I heard on the radio, reprinted without permission (sorry Simon, perhaps it should be called "Stealing Poems named 'Stealing Lilacs'"):

Poem: "Stealing Lilacs" by Alice N. Persons, from Never Say Never. © Moon Pie Press, 2004. Reprinted without permission.

Stealing Lilacs
A guaranteed miracle,
it happens for two weeks each May,
this bounty of riches
where McMansion, trailer,
the humblest driveway
burst with color—pale lavender,
purple, darker plum—
and glorious scent.
This morning a battered station wagon
drew up on my street
and a very fat woman got out
and starting tearing branches
from my neighbor's tall old lilac—
grabbing, snapping stems, heaving
armloads of purple sprays
into her beater.
A tangle of kids' arms and legs
writhed in the car.
I almost opened the screen door
to say something,
but couldn't begrudge her theft,
or the impulse
to steal such beauty.
Just this once,
there is enough for everyone.

Posted by david at May 24, 2007 10:32 PM in Dryden Courier
Note on photos