Tag: flowers

Summer Smells

677894-bigthumbnail

I love the smell of summer. Though you really can’t experience it until the sun starts to set and darkness sets in. Right now the sun is overtaking any whiff of delicacy in the air with its blazing heat, so you’d have to wait a while to experience what I mean. It has to be the perfect mixture of cool and warm mixed in a giant bowl called your backyard. I would describe it like freshly cut grass or the new growth of leaves on tree branches. Or maybe we can associate it with the smell of a coming rain. These aren’t very good descriptions. I know I have not enticed your creative mind to the extent of sight. I know you have not tasted the air of freshness melting on your tongue and all, but I have no other way to describe it aside from these basic examples. Besides, how does one explain the fragrance of life? Sometimes you can see a flower pouring all of its insides out, and cracking shells; shedding the once imperfect exterior to one more fitting for the season. Its growth is in many ways like our own. On first sight it looks like total destruction, and there is no gold at the end of the rainbow, at least not until we have weathered the storm. Always the hard stuff first, pain, suffering, tears, loneliness, doubt. I imagine it is a difficult process too for the flower. So much work to be done and change to endure early on. Only when it has shed its old casing do we begin to see the pretty pinks and reds of softer petals peek out from under the new coat of skin, see the dazzling beauty of what it has now become, and taste of the fresh smells of life.

Welcome

150315_0003

I picked up your scent going out the door this morning. I should have known that the impulse of a summer dress, short sleeved and cool, and the sliding of my foot into sneakers meant you were not far away. Instead, I would let my sweater drape over my arm and sniff the moisture you left hanging in the air. It wasn’t very bright out, but budding flowers and children laughing was enough. Did not need to see the sun lean its body dramatically over the clouds to feel the heat of spring on my skin. Bright colored birds sang a joyful tune on into the sky, and the curtains moved against the window sill just as seductively as the tree branches swayed leaves to and fro. And as my husband presents me with a pot of African violet, with petals all soft and blooming, and my neighbors resurrect house chairs for a spot on the porch, I know that spring has arrived. Welcome.