Summers in Cape Cod (Provincetown):
The sounds of the gulls over sand dunes. The smell of sea mixed with wild roses, which grow all along the shore. It's intoxicating. Falling asleep at night to the sound of three distinctly different foghorns - in between, I could hear the bell on a buoy. If I close my eyes I can still hear the foghorns. Sometimes it would be high tide when it was time for bed - the house was on the water, on stilts, so water rose right up under the house and lapped against the breakwall. Love and miss the boats - tons of wooden fishing and sailboats, handpainted in teal blue, red, white, and sometimes yellow. I get very "homesick" for the Cape, even though I never spent more than a month at a time there.
Family/Homesoil, Southern Illinois:
Miles of flat cornfields. The smell of barns and cow dung and hay, the calls of Bobwhites hiding in the fields. Hunting for crawfish in the little creek. The quiet, oh the quiet, and the heaviness of the afternoon heat.
Vacations in Nova Scotia:
The crisp, clean air smell of early morning - heavy with dew, mingled with the scents of the sea & the fishing boats on the dock. Wild roses are plentiful here also, as are blueberries and cranberries. The contrast between the wild blue of the sky in Fall with the flame-inspired hues of the foliage in October is thrilling.
Growing up in South Florida:
The sickly sweet and salty smell of brine in the marshes, where the fiddler crabs would come out and wave their supersize claw for a mate. Walking on the roots of the mangrove trees - best way to cross all the muck!
Considering I spent 28 years of my life in FL, I don't have much nice to say about it. It was never home. It's hot and muggy, like August, 9 months of the year.
Northwest GA, where I live now:
Oh the SEASONS! Here it seems the timing of all of the seasons is perfect. By the time you are sick of winter or tired of being so hot in the summer, the season changes. I love the crisp, cold air of a winter morning, the reassuring presence of warmth nearby in the smell of our wood burning stove. The chance of snow (never enough of it here) In Fall, I cannot get over how blue the sky becomes, I am intoxicated by the smell of burning leaves, and some years the colors are amazing. It's always peak color right around my birthday - Fall is my favorite season. The deer are moving, the leaves are falling and crunching underfoot (or under bike tires!).
In Spring I can never get over the color, the amazing gift every morning of a new flower coming into bloom, the smell of green in the air, the amazing number of birdcalls that announce Spring is here. I love the mountains. I love watching them change colors first - now the tops turn color before the valley does, in Spring the valley blooms before the mountain. In winter, the trees are bare and I can look out my window and see part of a ridge that's normally obscured by foliage.



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