My best friend spends half his life not being able to smell because of allergies. Another of my best friends has lost her sense of smell because of blockages in the sinus cavity which will need to be removed surgically.
So my first item today is that I am so grateful for the ability to smell things, to be able to identify an odor and appreciate (or remove myself from) it. Knowing when someone is wearing perfume has given me the lead-time I need to be able to vacate the area so that I don't become sick. I am so very grateful for the ability to smell.
The other nine things, well - there are certain scents that I am quite fond of, and a lot of them have to do with food - but not all. Some of them might surprise you. I'll start with the most obvious: a good steak charbroiling on the grill. Nothing quite like the smell of meat searing and the fire sealing in the juices. It makes the mouth water!!
I also love the smell of certain kinds of flowers. Roses, yes - love roses! But my favorite flower smell is of a "Hoya Carnosa" - an amazing heady fragrance coming from clusters of flowers, each dripping with syrupy nectar. ( For a photo of this, go to http://www.californiagardens.com/images/Hoya_carnosa_c.jpg ). - just open a new tab and copy the address into the address bar, so you don't lose your spot on this page. ;)
Vanilla ice cream. The smell of it brings back memories of days so hot you could hear the whistle in the air - and the sound of the ice cream truck jingling down the road as I waited with my fifty cents to get a couple of tiny tubs of plain vanilla ice cream, the kind that comes with the little wooden spork. It was such a treat - we usually had to wait until winter (when ice was plentiful and Dad could use the ice-cream maker) to get ice cream.
White clover. Fields upon fields of it. The purple has no fragrance - the white, though smaller, has a delicate scent that is like a breath from heaven.
Turkey dinner, replete with home-made pumpkin pie (and if I'm really ambitious, apple pie too). Something about the smell of a turkey roasting with dressing inside - puts a smile on my face. Complement that with the smell of the pies cooling on the counter - wow. I can be trudging in from outside and that smell will stop me at the door and transport me to another (happier) place.
Pan-fried new-potato hash. Just salt, pepper, and a little butter to lightly brown up these newly-cooked, fresh-from-the-ground potatoes. It takes me right back to my maternal grandmother's kitchen in the old homestead and the delicate flavor of the first new potatoes of the year.
Smoking wick. I love the smell of a candle (unscented of course) just after it's been blown out - people think I am nuts when, after a candle-light Christmas Eve service, I blow out the candle and sniff the smoke from the wick. It is symbolic for me of all the birthday celebrations when birthdays were a 'big deal'. The birthday girl (or boy) got to do whatever he or she wanted on that "all-about-me" day. What a great feeling.
Snow before it snows. Yes - it has a smell. There's something almost metallic about the smell of the air just minutes or hours before a snowstorm. There's a crispness to it. I can't explain it. Those who can smell it - you know what I mean. My kids have learned that when I say, "I smell snow..." - there is snow on the way. The first time I said it to them, they thought I was loopy. Now even they can smell it.
A real Christmas tree. It is reminiscent of the smell of the forest on a fall or winter's day and brings back such fond memories! We have an artificial tree now, to save on the hassle of transporting a real one home, but for many years we used to go as a family to pick out a real tree from the vendors who sell them in parking lots. Now, we get an evergreen wreath to have the smell of fir and spruce in the house between mid-December and the first of January. We still find needles from it in June - bonus!
So my first item today is that I am so grateful for the ability to smell things, to be able to identify an odor and appreciate (or remove myself from) it. Knowing when someone is wearing perfume has given me the lead-time I need to be able to vacate the area so that I don't become sick. I am so very grateful for the ability to smell.
The other nine things, well - there are certain scents that I am quite fond of, and a lot of them have to do with food - but not all. Some of them might surprise you. I'll start with the most obvious: a good steak charbroiling on the grill. Nothing quite like the smell of meat searing and the fire sealing in the juices. It makes the mouth water!!
Vanilla ice cream. The smell of it brings back memories of days so hot you could hear the whistle in the air - and the sound of the ice cream truck jingling down the road as I waited with my fifty cents to get a couple of tiny tubs of plain vanilla ice cream, the kind that comes with the little wooden spork. It was such a treat - we usually had to wait until winter (when ice was plentiful and Dad could use the ice-cream maker) to get ice cream.
White clover. Fields upon fields of it. The purple has no fragrance - the white, though smaller, has a delicate scent that is like a breath from heaven.
Turkey dinner, replete with home-made pumpkin pie (and if I'm really ambitious, apple pie too). Something about the smell of a turkey roasting with dressing inside - puts a smile on my face. Complement that with the smell of the pies cooling on the counter - wow. I can be trudging in from outside and that smell will stop me at the door and transport me to another (happier) place.
Pan-fried new-potato hash. Just salt, pepper, and a little butter to lightly brown up these newly-cooked, fresh-from-the-ground potatoes. It takes me right back to my maternal grandmother's kitchen in the old homestead and the delicate flavor of the first new potatoes of the year.
Smoking wick. I love the smell of a candle (unscented of course) just after it's been blown out - people think I am nuts when, after a candle-light Christmas Eve service, I blow out the candle and sniff the smoke from the wick. It is symbolic for me of all the birthday celebrations when birthdays were a 'big deal'. The birthday girl (or boy) got to do whatever he or she wanted on that "all-about-me" day. What a great feeling.
Snow before it snows. Yes - it has a smell. There's something almost metallic about the smell of the air just minutes or hours before a snowstorm. There's a crispness to it. I can't explain it. Those who can smell it - you know what I mean. My kids have learned that when I say, "I smell snow..." - there is snow on the way. The first time I said it to them, they thought I was loopy. Now even they can smell it.
A real Christmas tree. It is reminiscent of the smell of the forest on a fall or winter's day and brings back such fond memories! We have an artificial tree now, to save on the hassle of transporting a real one home, but for many years we used to go as a family to pick out a real tree from the vendors who sell them in parking lots. Now, we get an evergreen wreath to have the smell of fir and spruce in the house between mid-December and the first of January. We still find needles from it in June - bonus!
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