The smell of growing things

I've been a little obsessed with seed catalogs lately, but around 9:30pm last night, when we got home, my eldest ran the envelope with my order to the mailbox to go out today, and I am very excited. It contains an order from Rikki too, and also another friend.

Last night was very productive. In addition, a lovely person spread the word that chicken is on sale at Cash and Carry til Friday (or is it Sunday? - give them a call!) for less than $1 a pound, if you can fit 40 lbs in your freezer. Which I can, and did. It is all stuck together, which means I have to cook it all at once, but I can really find uses for that much cooked chicken, believe me! I've been meaning to do a mass cooking anyway. My grocery bill should shrink dramatically now that I have beef and chicken til at least spring if not next fall!

So, Spring! I miss spring. I realize it is not at all far away, and I just have to be patient. So I will wait. Something I've been pondering is the difference in smell I noticed last June on our RV trip from WA to CA and back. We live about 90 mins from Canada here. We traveled quite a ways, as far south as Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco. I realized while there that that part of CA really does smell like HOME to me.

So here is a break down of the difference:

Western Washington smells like evergreens and moss, and wet roadways, and cold. In the summer it smells the same way, it just warms up a bit. But it doesn't really have a smell the way some other places do. In the summer you just add a wet grass and dirt smell.

Western Oregon smells a little richer than W. WA. It smells even wetter, more like dirt, and maybe more like pine, and certainly more like moss. It smells like hemlock and alder and spruce trees. Most of all it just smells wet. Not like a wet dog, though, like wet leaves, both on the ground and on the trees.

The coast and say, 50 miles inland, of central CA smells completely different. For one thing, in the same yard, you will find redwoods and palm trees. That smells very different. Also, dry grass, yellow hillsides, and DRY. Even the fog on the coast does not diminish that smell of it being much dryer. I love the smell of redwoods. The ocean smells good, too. It smells like you could grow a wider variety of things, which of course, you can. It does not really ever smell cold.

Of course, the reason for this is the general move toward the equator. The sunlight changes, too. When the sun comes out here in WA, it just is there. It's wonderful, and we don't see it often in the winter, but when we do, it's time to run outside quick before it's gone. In OR it's the same, but it seems a bit brighter when it comes out. By the time you hit the CA/OR border, it's completely different, especially that change in vegetation. And the sunlight is very bright when it shines on the dew on the grass in spring, which begins for sure in March, not May. And in CA, you will probably see the sun at least once a week, and expect that, instead of once a month up north in winter.

I miss CA. If I can ever pay off my last trip, I will happily take another down there to see my home, sweet home. My home with friends is in WA, but my heart is so happy to see CA. It's like recharging my batteries.