This Is Summer

I'm playing with the SITS girls this week, in their Stop the Summer Slump Blogging Challenge. 

Yesterday's theme was to step outside the usual routine and write in a different way, so I wrote like the reporter I will never be.

I'm actually a day behind, but let's pretend I'm not.

Today, the task is to write about the simple things.

There is no greater joy of summer for me than particular smells native to where I live.  First, it's the roses.  In my yard, we have rosa rugosa (below) and some other rambling and invasive white rose (above).  They bloom around the same time, right in the middle of June, and I can hardly describe the way they smell.

There isn't a much more enjoyable smell, to me.  They are pretty strong and I can't imagine being in a a closed room with them, but here, near the beach,   the smell is just part of what I grew up smelling.

Both roses have just shown up, with no help from me.  I don't water them, I am really mean to the white ones and cut them down all the time, and here they come, year after year, thumbing their noses by tantalizing mine.   They are untamable but in sandy conditions like we have here, plants have to adapt and once they do, good luck ever getting them under control.

And speaking of sand...

Another smell that is mostly prevalent in summer and a truly blissful smell because it means summer, is the beach itself.  I don't live on the beach, but I can almost see it from my house and often, I can smell it.  There's the low tide, hard boiled egg smell that isn't pretty, but mostly doesn't bother me because it means I live near the ocean and I like that.

But in the summer, there's another ocean smell that we sometimes get when the wind is just right.  If I am in my yard, smelling the roses and possibly another bush that has come into bloom which I can't name, my mind goes to every summer I can remember.

These smells are better than any perfume or food smells and for me, they are the reason summer is the best time of the year.