Day 53 ~ One Year, One Nose

Wisteria



They're blooming all over the Tower. Being one of the older parts of Fresno, The Tower is host to a couple of old gardens boasting ancient wisteria, and particularly down Van Ness Avenue, which 'in the day' used to be the main street off of downtown on which the more wealthy citizens of Fresno built their mansions and award-winning gardens. There is a particular wisteria I pass every day, twice a day, to and from work, that grows so closely to the old manse it lives by that I cannot discern where its trunk sprouts from the ground, but the flowers drip and drape over the entire front and side of the building's south facing wall -- it's magical. I did not first see the wisteria -- I smelled it. I at first did not recognize the scent because there was something different about it, it seemed -- bigger, effusive, and so familiar though I knew I'd never smelled that particular scent before, then as I pedaled closer to the wisteria, I passed very closely to an old house with a small sweet orange orchard in the back (I could see their deep green leafy heads over the fence) and then it struck me -- I was smelling the newly blossomed sweet orange flowers AND wisteria at once! Once I passed the orange grove, it was all wisteria -- deeply sweet and shadowing the scents of vanilla and marshmallow fluff and crystalline sugar. Wisteria is what purple smells like.

As I am in constant experimentation mode with transferring the scent and feel of perfumery raw materials to food, I went on a search to find something foody created using wisteria, and here is what I found. Oh, and do not try using wisteria blossoms in food or in a tisane (pronounced tee zahn) as it is poisonous.