Ahhhh…breathe it in

Take a deep breath.  Inhale and savor the sweet aroma of the first grass cutting of the season.

For me, nothing smells more like spring and summer than the scent of blooming flowers and a freshly cut lawn.

For one day last week, we experienced lovely weather here at Mama’s Empty Nest – temperatures in the mid-to-high 70’s and abundant sunshine.  It served to revive both my spirit and the landscape outside our country home.

Flowers awakened from their long winter naps and burst forth in color.  Yellow happy daffodils, white daffodils with bright sunshiny centers, pretty in pink and purple hyacinths, ruby red tulips and deep purple grape hyacinths greeted me with their coats of color and their endearing scents.  Just a couple days of warmth and sunshine coaxed our rhododendron bushes around our front porch to spontaneously burst into an array of color as well.

Our yard is a good two and one half acres of green.   Interspersed here and there a few trees stand, but they are still fairly small, so the lawn is a wide expanse of grass. (Okay, I’ll be honest – there are lots of weeds in there too, but hey, they’re green!)  With the outrageous amounts of rain we’ve endured this spring, our lawn had grown quite high, so it was time for the first mowing of the season.

Middle daughter and I set forth for an afternoon on the wedding plan quest.  When we left the house, hubby was maneuvering the trusty John Deere lawn tractor back and forth as he mowed the acreage.

Upon our arrival back home, it was dusk.  The sun was setting and providing its usual spectacular view from our surroundings.  We stepped out of daughter’s car and that’s when it engulfed us.

The aroma.   Oh, so lovely.  There’s something about the scent of freshly mowed grass that just makes you audibly sigh and know that all is right with the world.  I believe it is just another of God’s gifts to us.

That aroma heightens the senses, brightens the mood and brings yester-year memories of spring days and summer evenings to mind.   Both daughter and I actually voiced “ahh” simultaneously as the scent entered our noses.

And then we heard the sounds that also accompany spring and summer here in the country.  The peepers.

Spring peepers, a chorus of tiny little frogs who live in the marsh behind our property,  serenade us with their peeping songs.

These little guys usher spring into our area and we hear them throughout the summer as well.  They remind me of  tiny trumpeters heralding the season’s change.

We just stood there in the driveway for a couple of minutes absorbing the scent and sound, so refreshing after a frustrating day in search of wedding gowns.

We looked at each other and smiled.  And I remarked to my daughter, one of the dearest loves of my life, “You can’t experience this in the city.”

As I recall the bliss of that moment in my book of Opportunity, I’m so grateful for my home in the country on this fourth page of Chapter Five.

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