Elle, I know what you mean about the bugs - I am a mosquito magnet like you would not believe! I wonder if the giant bugs you mentioned are June bugs? I was terrified of them when I was little, they were so huge and loud! No one could convince me they were harmless, though of course they are. And I could have sworn there was a night-scented stock fragrance out there, maybe an EDT by one of the more obscure English fragrance houses, but I can’t seem to track it down. I found a perfume oil of it from shopholistic.co.uk, all natural it says, and there is a ROOM fragrance by Regent House, sold on Amazon.co.uk. Probably can’t get it in the U.S. unless you want to pay more for shipping than for the bottle! This particular flower seems to be better known and appreciated in Great Britain than it is here.

nikki, we must be neighbors of a sort - I miss a lot about New England, but not the humidity or the winters! And Daphne odora is a good enough reason to live here all by itself! There are so many other Daphnes as well, all well suited to grow here; right now my ‘Summer Ice’ is in its third blooming of the year. Spicy instead of lemony, it is nonetheless fabulous.

Thank you rosarita! I loved fireflies too, and I was shocked when I moved here and discovered that there are none west of the Rockies! If I could have one thing back that would be it. (No such thing as an attic fan in my old house - it was built in Colonial times. There was horsehair in the plaster!)

In those childhood days before air conditioning (and $4/gal. gasoline), family drives to cool off were fun, weren’t they? I love your desciption of the smells and I can see the lightning bugs, too. Did you have an attic fan, to bring in the cool night air?

Thanks for such an enjoyable read.

We don’t get much of that here in SoCal, what we do get is the most marvelous golden light for the hour or so before the sun drops like a stone into the Pacific. What we also don’t get are mosquitos, thank goodness.

Again, thank you for a lovely read!