How Far Does Your Influence Go?

Maybe further than you think

A Jazz Festival bloom at Evergreen.

Without planning it, at Evergreen we’ve planted some of the most beautifully perfumed flowers in the world: jasmine, honeysuckle, roses, gardenia and lavender.

The star jasmine is creeping up and over an arch at the top of the garden path, emitting an invisible cloud of sweet, heavy perfume. Honeysuckle twines around the trunk of the Liquidambar near the back door, roses bloom in terracotta pots, and gardenias and various lavenders are dotted around the place ready to surprise me with their fragrant offerings.

I’ve always thought that the perfume of a flower emerged from its pollen. That’s why, after a careful check that no bees have beat me to it, I stick my nose as far into a flower as possible and take a deep sniff. When my nose re-emerges, it often has pollen on its tip.

But a bit of research taught me that it’s the petals that create the perfume and release it into the air.

Flower perfume is made of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) inside the petals. Depending on the flower, these are either diffused into the atmosphere through membranes, or chemically released.

How far the perfume travels depends on the strength of the perfume, the air temperature, the speed of the wind, and the degree of air pollution. Some can be carried as far as a kilometre before breaking down to imperceptibility.

It's the petals that make a flower appealing. They attract pollinators (insects, birds, my nose) not only with their scent, but also with their colour and shape.

I go into the garden and feel the petals of a Jazz Festival rose growing at head height in a terracotta pot.

Touching a petal is as pleasurable as stroking a baby’s cheek, fondling a puppy’s floppy ear, or running fingers across deep velvet.

Doing any of these things brings one to a state of presence.

As I gently feel the softness of the petal, I wonder what the petals of my life are doing and how far does my influence go.

I ask myself:

• What am I creating?

• What am I releasing into the world?

• Do I repel or attract others by what I’m giving off?

• How far does my influence go?

These are good questions to ponder in the sunshine of a balmy summer day.

As I turn to go inside, a patch of petunias stops me in my tracks. Their delicate perfume is so generous it almost colours the air with pinks and purples, and prompts a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem ‘God’s Grandeur’:

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.

Like these humble petunias at my feet, may my petals release the perfume of dearest freshness deep down things into the world, perhaps even as far as a kilometre away . . . or more.

How far does your influence go?

Maybe further than you think!

With love, Marlane