Lately my neighbors’ tumbling mass of super sweet jasmine stops me in my tracks on my morning coffeewalks and reminds me of a children’s story that made a big impression on Small Me:

There’s a very poor old man living in a very small village. He’s so poor, he can only afford one very small bowl of rice a day. So every day, he takes his one precious bowl of rice and stands in the corner of the village fish shop, enjoying the smell of fresh fish alongside the taste of his few grains of rice.

But the fishmonger gets impatient with him and complains to the village magistrate. “Sir! He is stealing from me! If he wants to enjoy my fish, he should pay for it!”

The magistrate thinks for a moment, and then asks the very poor old man if he has any coins in his pocket. “Yes sir, but they are all I have in the world, and if I must give them up, I will have nothing left to buy my rice.”

“Yet the fishmonger is right, he must be paid. Therefore take the coins from your pocket, hold them in your hand, and jingle them so that he may hear. And now, fishmonger, there is your fitting payment: the sound of money for the scent of fish.”

Anyway. All this to say, I hope the sight of me closing my eyes and smiling is fitting payment to my neighbors for sticking my nose into their blossoms and borrowing their fragrance every morning.