Despite having been obsessed with houseplants since I was a wee lad, I’ve never gotten into Hoyas. They seem to inspire a fervid passion in certain plant collectors and enthusiasts, but they’ve largely avoided my interest. I’ve never been a huge fan of the trailing houseplant – the trellises they enjoy too often read as clutter in my annoying Virgo’s mind. Lately, however, I’ve been charmed by the Hoya’s winning attributes – their flowers and pretty leaves, the way some of their nectar is sweet, how some of their perfume is intoxicating. The wide variety of cultivars and forms are also infinitely interesting. Coming into a new interest and passion well past the halfway mark of life is a reminder of how much excitement there is yet to be had in new discoveries.

A few weeks ago I procured my very first Hoya – the Hoya pubicalyx. It’s a very little plant at the moment, the better to acclimate and raise it from the very beginning. In certain houseplant folklore, the Hoya is considered to be a symbol of everlasting affection, love, and protection of home. All good things in this treacherous world.

Way back when I was planning this website over two decades ago, blogs were relatively new. I had grandiose and impossibly-ridiculous ideas of how I wanted ALANILAGAN.com to appear, none of which was possible. First, I wanted ambient music in the background and shifting light schemes. Second, I wanted fragrance, pumped out of everyone’s computer to complement whatever the current blog post was. Third, I wanted smoke (well, just some water vapor) to accompany the fragrance. I was going for an entire sensory experience. After discussions with my first webmaster, none of those wishes would come to be granted (or even possible) so I compromised and took up the challenge of writing the atmosphere I wanted to convey.

Since that time, many advances have been made on the website front, but I still can’t emit fragrance or smoke from your lap top or phones. That means this blog post on jasmine blooms must be a thing of description, a thread of words to wind its way into your mind versus your nose. A sweet classic white floral, jasmine’s perfume is tempered by a freshness, an element of green that keeps it from becoming too cloying, too sweet. It’s difficult to capture that outside of the natural scent, so I’m not a big fan of perfumes that proclaim to be jasmine – only the real deal will do. And maybe that’s something I should have realized from the beginning – there is just no approximating certain fragrances, and my initial attempt to do so was probably best left unfulfilled.