Browsed by
Category: smells

Scentscape

Scentscape

Comments 0 Comment

Walking through a field of clover the other day, I caught a whiff of childhood. The sweetness of the  purple flower mixed with the aroma of cut grass, loamy earth and hot sun. The scents were radiating from below, up past my knees and into my nose.

But there was a time when those smells didn’t have as far to travel. A time when I was closer to the ground. We all were.

No wonder, then, that the world was full of fragrance. That we were storing up a lifetime of olfactory memories and triggers, a scentscape.

It was the world, and we were just coming alive to it. And it can be there for us again. Just take a deep breath.

Honeysuckle Season

Honeysuckle Season

Comments 0 Comment

It isn’t just the flowers and new leaves that make May my favorite month, the azealas and the iris. It’s the perfumed air. Take a walk in our neighborhood now and you would have to be suffering from a severe head cold or sinus infection to miss the olfactory assault.

The air is literally perfumed. Stroll past the honeysuckle. Deconstruct that scent. For me, it is cool mornings along a Fayette County Lane, out early to pick strawberries. It is a roll-on perfume by Avon that I wore in high school, came in a little tube like Chap-Stick. I thought it marked me as a “natural girl.” No Shalimar for me!

Honeysuckle drapes itself over hedges and fence rows. It is an elegant, lithesome plant, willing to grow just about anywhere.  Which is good news for us. Because that means we can smell it on walks through woods or along suburban lanes.

Last night I picked a sprig and bought it home. Now it sits beside the kitchen window. Bringing the outside in.

Photo: GardenLovetoKnow.com

In Search of Scent

In Search of Scent

Comments 0 Comment


I am a woman without a scent. The O De Lancome that suited me fine for half a decade now seems cloying and sharp. I remember when I first wore that perfume; it was during a difficult time of my life, and its lemony, astringent aroma became a scented badge of honor.

I didn’t wear it again for years. In between I tried Anias, Anias by Cacherel, a flowery, romantic cologne that arrested me at a counter in the long-since departed Altman’s Department Store in Manhattan and wouldn’t let me go for years.

Then there was Oscar de la Renta, my stalwart. It sailed me through the busy years of my children’s childhoods, when I needed just a splash of something sweet to get me through the day.

After that I went back to O De Lancome. For the memories, you might say. For the invincible way it made me feel.

But I’m out of Lancome and at a crossroads. Will my new fragrance be floral or sophisticated? Light or musky? I need some serious time at a perfume counter. I need to be swept off my feet again. I’m a woman in search of a scent.