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There’s a California lilac — not the true syringa lilac of rhapsodic song and poetry but a ceanothus.

I also come across a fragrantly flowering wild syringa, filling the air with orange-blossom sweetness.

The poem recalled Dr. Crozier as a bald, bigheaded boy who waged war with syringa berries, “the stick-breaker, the toddler I carried on my shoulders up and down the dirt tracks.”

It stands at the end of the drive leading out past the blooming syringas and a great bed of vari-colored peonies to the street.

I saw a few sickly fruit-trees that appeared dying for lack of moisture; and some enterprising citizens were able to make a show of lilacs, syringas, pinks, and geraniums in their front yards.