Garden Scents
A garden is really an experience that hits all five senses. I've mostly been sharing photos, and the nature of writing about it means you're getting a lot of visual imagery. The day before we left for our quick weekend trip to Pennsylvania, though, was a case study in olfactory gardening. Here are the smells of midsummer in our garden.
Ocean
We enjoyed some lovely cool temperatures (like highs in the 70s, lows in the 50s) in the middle part of last week, and the wind off the water was partly responsible for this. Whenever we get an east wind, I am reminded just how close we are to the Atlantic Ocean and the Merrimack River. Of course I know this all the time, but when the cool moist air blows in over the High Street ridge, I really know it because I can smell the sea-salt air all around me. This is one of my all-time favorite smells, so every time it blows up I am glad we moved here. Smelling the ocean makes working in the garden feel less like working and more like a vacation.
Fresh Cut Grass
One of the tasks made more pleasant by the aforementioned easterly wind was weeding the lawn. Never in my life have I bothered to do such a thing, as I subscribe to a "any green is good" philosophy of lawn care. In the back section of new grass there is still a lot of giant crabgrass, though, even after having rototilled it. We did a much better job getting rid of it after tilling the side yard, but in the back I am going barefoot over new shoots and pulling out crabgrass, to give some breathing room to the real grass. It is unlikely that we will ever do this level of maintenance again (ditto on the intense watering through the summer).
Anyway, Kirk took the reel mower to the section that has grown in and been weeded, so we were treated to the scent of young, mown grass—something we haven't smelled in a while! And there's at least one part of the yard that looks great, so it was also the smell of progress.
Roses
The new roses (White Out) in the perennial border haven't missed a beat with being transplanted into their new home. This is a front yard smell because they aren't very strongly scented, but they're nice and kind of lemony--not too old lady perfumey.
Compost
Compost doesn't normally smell like much of anything besides dirt, but boy howdy does the newest load from the tree dump smell. It's super-hot—Kirk said it fogged up the inside of his windows when he brought it back—and it smells mostly like manure. At night when the windows near the perennial border are open, I think it smells kind of like dirty socks, too. It's dissipated somewhat while we've been away, and maybe the rain we're having now will help that too. It's not terrible, but it's no rose-grass-ocean cocktail, either. All the more reason to get our own compost bins knocked together and ready to go for fall—but that's another day.
Ocean
We enjoyed some lovely cool temperatures (like highs in the 70s, lows in the 50s) in the middle part of last week, and the wind off the water was partly responsible for this. Whenever we get an east wind, I am reminded just how close we are to the Atlantic Ocean and the Merrimack River. Of course I know this all the time, but when the cool moist air blows in over the High Street ridge, I really know it because I can smell the sea-salt air all around me. This is one of my all-time favorite smells, so every time it blows up I am glad we moved here. Smelling the ocean makes working in the garden feel less like working and more like a vacation.
Fresh Cut Grass
One of the tasks made more pleasant by the aforementioned easterly wind was weeding the lawn. Never in my life have I bothered to do such a thing, as I subscribe to a "any green is good" philosophy of lawn care. In the back section of new grass there is still a lot of giant crabgrass, though, even after having rototilled it. We did a much better job getting rid of it after tilling the side yard, but in the back I am going barefoot over new shoots and pulling out crabgrass, to give some breathing room to the real grass. It is unlikely that we will ever do this level of maintenance again (ditto on the intense watering through the summer).
Anyway, Kirk took the reel mower to the section that has grown in and been weeded, so we were treated to the scent of young, mown grass—something we haven't smelled in a while! And there's at least one part of the yard that looks great, so it was also the smell of progress.
Roses
The new roses (White Out) in the perennial border haven't missed a beat with being transplanted into their new home. This is a front yard smell because they aren't very strongly scented, but they're nice and kind of lemony--not too old lady perfumey.
Compost
Compost doesn't normally smell like much of anything besides dirt, but boy howdy does the newest load from the tree dump smell. It's super-hot—Kirk said it fogged up the inside of his windows when he brought it back—and it smells mostly like manure. At night when the windows near the perennial border are open, I think it smells kind of like dirty socks, too. It's dissipated somewhat while we've been away, and maybe the rain we're having now will help that too. It's not terrible, but it's no rose-grass-ocean cocktail, either. All the more reason to get our own compost bins knocked together and ready to go for fall—but that's another day.
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