This morning early I rode my bicycle to the park because I noticed a sweet smell in the air yesterday and realized it is from the linden tree across the street, currently in bloom and attracting lots of bees and butterflies. I wanted to see if the linden at the top of the long hill up Skinker Blvd. was also blooming and sweet. Before I left, though, I had to deal with the uglier side of nature. Kitten Britches, now 16 or so years old and the last former alley cat, or any cat, I will ever allow to go outside (Dennis and I have agreed if we have another cat it will be an indoors cat) had caught a young rabbit. I managed to pull her off but the poor rabbit was injured and in for a slow death otherwise so I let Britches go to kill it. I had been entertaining the happy notion that she was getting too old to hunt, but her mother taught her well and she is still in good shape. So. On with the bike ride, during which I saw a dozen or so other rabbits, and some chipmunks. The linden tree I had in mind had already bloomed but others throughout the park suffused the air with that sweetness. I wish I could bottle that smell. I remember in the movie Harold and Maude, Ruth Gordon has some sort of smell machine to hold her olfactory memories and keep them fresh.