sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

March 8, 2011


ten on tuesday: favorite smells
posted by soe 11:32 pm

Today’s Ten on Tuesday topic appealed to me not just because I’m just home from a long drive that followed a depressing vet diagnosis and a stomach ailment (just so you don’t feel too bad for me, the visit also included a birthday party, a baby, and a best friend) and could use a quick list-as-post fodder, but also because smell is such a powerful emotion-producer.

Here are ten of my favorite scents:

  1. Vanilla — It’s the smell of all great baked items and the most basic and beautiful base for ice cream.
  2. The ocean — Salt, sunscreen (or anything coconutty that reminds me of it), drying seaweed… Anyone who tells you they love the smell of the shore except for low tide doesn’t really love the smell of the shore. It’s all or nothing, baby.
  3. Pizza — If the scents of tomatoes, yeast, and cheese don’t waft past you as you open the door of a pizzeria, back out the door and run like the wind, because it will not satisfy that longing deep inside you.
  4. Freshly washed hair — Particularly if it’s baby shampoo, but just about any will do.
  5. Laundry dried outside — The dryer makes for the coziest towels, but otherwise nothing beats laundry just pulled in from the line.
  6. Play-doh — I’m not proud. I have several containers I keep around as aromatherapy on bad days.
  7. Crayola crayons — Did you know my generation is the first one to have equally vivid positive memories of manufactured items as of natural ones?
  8. Sun-kissed berries — Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries: It really doesn’t matter which.
  9. Fresh flowers — Roses (ones that actually smell rosy, as opposed to some of the more long-lasting recent strains they’ve developed), lilacs, clover, violets, hyacinths, and lavender are all simply lovely.
  10. The weather changing — You can smell snow coming in the winter. There’s an electric smell just before a summer thunderstorm. Leaves mouldering under your feet mean fall has arrived. And deep, wet, earthworm-turned earth says spring is right around the corner.

What smells make you dance with joy?

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