Get a whiff of this
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
Here it is, threatening to freeze and we have roses blooming. There's one particularly beautiful bud that my mother has been watching in her back yard, unbeknownst to my sister.
"Get a whiff of this," Jess said as she came around the side of the house with the rose bud in her hand, "This will lift your spirits."
We all dutifully sniffed — it WAS one of those wonderful, dusky, mellow, heady-with-a-touch-of-spice roses. And then we sniffed again, breathing deeply. A whiff of this rose could help you work a little harder planting fall flowers.
In the country, all smells are not quite so delicious. I remember the first year we were here and in my back-to-the-earth eagerness, I put chicken manure on my garden and all the flower beds.
Now that was a smell to remember. Anyone walking near our yard would say, "Woah, get a whiff of this!"
When the cattle hauling trucks pull into town and their owners don't wash them down, we try not to breathe. And when the wind comes from the northwest, Ramona is engulfed in the smell of cattle yards.
"Is there a sewer backing up somewhere?" my mother wants to know. "Nah, it's just the smell of money," says Tooltime Tim with a grin.
While we were still living in California, my daughter called one morning and said, "I need more bodies at a fragrance seminar we're holding at the store. Can you come?" With a promise of free samples, we were on our way. The rep from Donna Karan was talking about their excellent fragrance. "It doesn't drift," she said and then instructed us, "Good perfume is to be enjoyed only by someone very close to you. Donna Karan perfume does not leave a fragrance trail!"
We all chuckled to ourselves about fragrance trails. I'd never thought of leaving a fragrance trail, but I can remember going to church and smelling the ladies' perfume wafting up and down the aisles. We called it "Avon Calling." Some of this was potent stuff! It left a trail a mile wide.
Darlene Sondergard said she remembered Carrie Buxman's favorite perfume. "She wore Topaz," said Darlene and she had this coat with a big fur collar. "She must have sprayed herself every time right before she walked out the door to come to church. She'd sit on the south side of the church, by the window and the sun would come in that window, warming the fur on her coat and Topaz would engulf us — oh, man, that was something."
We paused a moment, remembering our fragrance memories. A scent can take you back immediately to some other place and time you know. I have an old perfume bottle setting on my shelf with a few drops of distilled cologne in the bottom. Open the stopper, take a whiff and I am immediately transported back to my high school days!
We're always impressed with guests at our B&B who come downstairs in the morning smelling of cologne. "Any man who sports a freshly pressed shirt and aftershave is a hit around here," says my sister as she whips up her pancake batter.
Aunt Naomi agrees. "I remember John Lorei always wore Old Spice," she says. "He used to come over in the mornings and talk with Kenneth and after he'd leave, I could still smell his aftershave in the air and on the chair!"
It's another day in the country, and we just had our city council meeting. Paul, our maintenance man, came through the door fresh from the shower and you could smell his aftershave. "That little whiff of fragrance made even the most tedious meeting a little more bearable!" said the city clerk. Isn't it amazing what a little dab'll do?
