On the Summer Breeze

 

Don Collier photo

There's a scent I only smell on early mid-summer mornings - fresh, lake-scented - that transports me back to childhood, and Grandma's little war-time cottage, the lake just down the lane. Her garden scented the yard with pinks, peonies, sweet pea, hollyhocks. In the afternoons, I read, in the hammock under the weeping willow, its long fronds draped over me like a tent, with their distinctive odor. I swam in the lake once under a grey gunmetal sky, the air smelling sharp, metallic, just before the thunder rolled. Then that smell all its own - petrichor - just before the first fat raindrops fell on parched and sandy earth. In my old age, any of these essences takes me back to the days that shine brighter than bright, my best memories lake-scented, forever flower-filled and fragrant.

Summer at Grandma's -
the safest and most peaceful
place I ever knew.

A haibun for Sumana's prompt at What's Going On - Fragrance