SmellAndPlace

[ChickenLil] Hello to all - It's April 1 and I came to see what the Ecotone Wiki is about. I "met" Cassandra recently, because I found her weblog to be resonant with my own, and we even started our blogs the same week a year ago, just before the start of the war. I think my blogging has helped to keep me sane through this past difficult, challenging year, in which - among world events and personal changes - my husband and I finally sold our home and land in New Mexico, which we had spent twenty years caring for...despite the powerful oppositional forces in a transitional neighborhood. Our family grew up and was gone. It took a long time to get out of there, and at times was a wrenching experience. I feel freed by the release, and do not wish to be back, but the memories persist and I try to keep my focus on the beauty, love and healing that were present in that place. [Post on SmellandPlace? April 1 at [C. Little, no less] ---

[Feathers of Hope (Numenius)] On earthworm perfume, or bottling scents of place...

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[Feathers of Hope (Pica)] The scent of warm pine needles prompts thoughts of naps.

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[C. Little, no less] Pink Roses ...I picked a little sprig of pink roses, and they filled the car with a pink aroma --something like Evening in Glendale, Southern-style. Revival, anyone?

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[Beginner's Mind] All around us, but particularly out back in the woods there has been a strong smell of wet spring. It's a mixture of the odor of fresh mud, with a strong earthy, humus smell from the damp covering of previous years' leaves. Usually there is the sweet scent of pine, especially in the summer.

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P: Allergies and viruses have held my nose prisoner for most of my adult life; I don't smell very well (no one will comment on whether I smell good, and I only hope that however badly I smell, I don't smell bad).

But between the mold-and-house-dust season and the pollen season, I sometimes get a furlough. Unfortunately, I notice mainly the strong smells then -- I go from durance to vile. This is the season when the farmer spreads stored manure on fields, making a stink that would gag a moose; when dead critters finally begin to decay; when melting snow overloads the septic tanks; when we return from vacation to an olfactory welcome from the refrigerator (who knew rice would rot so quickly!).

And now is the time for all well-digested canine meals to come out from their discreet blanket of snow and hide in the littered grass, awaiting the unwary foot. I'm told the huntsman calls it "scumble."

Years ago, I used to cut wild daisies to bring to my wife. As the little bundle grew on my passenger seat (I took only a few from each cluster), a smell grew in my car. "Oops," I would think, and absently scrape my shoes. Come to find out it was the daisies themselves -- they're pollinated by cluster flies or one of those other barnyard hangers-on with unspeakable habits, and mimic, well ... you know. I guess that explains why you only get daisylike mums in florists' stores.