The Scent of Orange Blossoms

 

This is the time of the year when my Phoenix neighborhood savors the scent of orange blossoms. 

The entire block was once an orange grove, and enough trees remain for seasonal aroma flashbacks. We still have and use the irrigation canals that stem from the much larger canals that weave throughout the Valley of the Sun. Many of those were initially dug by a long-departed tribe of Indians.

Just the other day, I was noticing the number of out-of-state license plates: Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Florida and, of course, refugees from California. We are still in the snowbird season, but most of them will have left by the arrival of June.

Summer is for character-building and population reduction. If we didn't have the heat, there'd be around three million more people here because winters in Phoenix are very nice.

[Photo by Max at Unsplash]