Wild Azaleas and Honeysuckle Dreams

While camping this spring, we were fortunate to see the wild Azaleas blooming. The blossoms spotted the dense green forest with splashes of red and pink color. These azaleas are often called wild honeysuckle because their blossoms resemble the flowers of the honeysuckle vine and they also have the same pungently sweet sent. As a child who grew up in the Deep South, I can remember, on hot humid spring days, the intense sweet smell of the wild honeysuckle. The smell was intoxicating and we always stopped to pick a few blooms off the vine to suck the nectar hoping it would hold our hunger so we would not have to stop playing and have to take time out to eat lunch.