Five Minute Freewrite: Apricot

Osmanthus fragrans flower

Find the prompt here: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-14-5-minute-freewrite-prompt-apricot

My favorite flower is Osmanthus fragrans. People say it smells like a combination of apricots and peaches. I don't know those smells well enough to say if I agree, but I know that when I smell Osmanthus fragrans, I feel like I'm in heaven. I want to close my eyes and just inhale that scent for the rest of forever, and I think that I would be content to do that.

For the longest time, I didn't know what the scent belonged to. I smelled it as we walked or biked along Los Feliz Blvd and remembered the scent from when we lived in New Orleans for three months in 2008-2009. I hadn't smelled it since New Orleans and in New Orleans, hadn't bothered trying to identify it. It was such a pervasive scent in New Orleans, I just enjoyed it, but didn't realize how much I loved it or missed it until I smelled it again unexpectedly those many years later in Los Angeles.

One day I chose to walk along Los Feliz Blvd with the express purpose of finding the flower that the scent emanated from. I was successful, and picked one of the flowers to try and identify it when I got home. I didn't realize how fragile the flowers are, and it was fairly unrecognizable by the time I was at my computer.

And time's up.

Huge Osmanthus fragrans shrub at Descanso Gardens