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["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

One year we had some lovely warm sunny fall days in the Tennessee Valley, and the people I was working with took to eating their lunch outside.  There was a wonderful strong perfume in the air each day, and I was very puzzled as I generally have trouble enduring the sort of cheap perfume that the busy laundry room would have been belching from the dryers.  About the third day of this I noted a constant buzzing sound, and followed it to the source, bees on Eleagnus bushes in bloom.   Some scents I like, many I don't but this one was fantastic.  I have wanted one ever since, but they are kind of borderline here in Z6 as I understand it.   I do see them in yards now and then.  I didn't know they were good for anything, have never seen fruit on them.  The autumn olives we have don't seem to make much scent, the seedlings appear everywhere though we have chopped the big plants back annually to keep them from fruiting after seeing how they have taken over parts of Virginia.     Donna