Honeysuckle haven

As I walk up the steep road through the neighbor's woods, the aroma of honeysuckle hangs heavily in the damp early-morning air. I feel as if I'm swimming in perfume, and I recall the big gardenia bush that grew just outside the front door of my family's first house in Florida: opening the door on a very hot day was like being rolled in a thick blanket soaked with sickly-sweet scent. To this day I can't abide the odor of gardenia.

But honeysuckle is a different story. Right now it's blooming profusely in the woods and along the edges of our country roads, and while it can be a little overwhelming at times, I welcome its sweet aroma even though I know I should abhor honeysuckle as an invasive species crowding out native flora. Like the lilacs, wisteria, and multiflora roses blooming in these woods, honeysuckle was imported by early settlers to beautify their farmsteads only to spread into areas where they become pests.

Now I appreciate native wildflowers and I am willing to pull up invasive pests that threaten to take over their territory. Every spring we go on a garlic-mustard purge, which seems to be working because we find less each year. Garlic mustard spreads profusely--it's already colonizing the area at the end of our meadow where the power company's slash-and-burn crew chopped down trees and applied herbicides last fall to clear out foliage under transmission lines. Pulling it all out will be quite a job but if I let it get a foothold there, it'll soon spread all over our meadow.

So I'll pull out garlic mustard but I'm not planning to go on a honeysuckle purge anytime soon. We don't have much on our property, but even if we did, I would be reluctant to get rid of it. Why? Honeysuckle played an important role in my bringing me and my husband together. I would sit in my dorm room studying before supper, the scent of honeysuckle coming through my open window, and soon the scent would mingle with the sound of a distant harmonica playing some peppy hymn tune like "I'll Fly Away," and as the sound got closer, I would close my books, leave my room, and go out to greet my beloved harmonica-player near the honeysuckle bush. Since then, I can't smell honeysuckle without being transported to that delightful time.

I realize that my sentimental attachment to a decades-old memory is an irrational basis for my attitude toward invasive species. If he had played the harmonica while wandering through a field of garlic mustard, would I get all weak-kneed every time I smelled that weed's pungent scent? I think not! And yet when the naturalists tell us to tear out the honeysuckle, I reject their message in favor of nostalgia.

Knowledge complicates my relationship with nature. Naturalists tell me that I ought to abhor invasive honeysuckle but I can't stop loving it, except now that love is tinged with guilt. Why is it so difficult to stop loving things we know are bad for us?

And who can think about such complex questions when the air is sweet with the scent of honeysuckle?