That Gardening Smell

driveway rock toppingRavioli, ravioli, give me the fresh cannoli.

That’s what I keep telling Mum, but she always pulls them right out of the oven, so all the delicious smells waft all over the house, and then smacks my hands when I try to take them. They’re for the family, she says. I have to wait until everyone arrives, AND we’ve had the first course. What a tyrant.

The smell of freshly-made cannoli is one of my favourite things as well, alongside mown grass and vanilla-scented candles. In fact, I just like gardening in general. The Hawthornes next door are having some landscaping work done, mostly driveway toppings. Berwick has quite a racket going on for that stuff, so I often pass by places having their hedges trimmed, or fresh concrete laid for a driveway…and oh boy, it’s great. The Hawthornes don’t actually know it, but sometimes I just like to sit on the other side of our front fence and inhale the wonderful smell of gardening and industry. You know how some people are really visual, so they go to art galleries, and some people are aural, so they go to music concerts? I’m like that, but with smell. Nothing weird, I just really like nice scents, sort of like everyone likes the scent of a candle, except I seek them out instead. There’s nothing quite like the smell of crushed rock in the morning. And I will literally go down to the garden centre and drink in the scent of all the garden products. That place is just SO rife with goodness. Building supplies are similar…although it’s really the smell of the garden that has the edge.

This may sound a little bit weird, but really, it’s just pleasant. Maybe I should’ve been a garden landscaper or some such thing. Then I could drive along every day to somewhere like Cranbourne, garden pavers being my target. I’ll load up my ute with stone pavers, lay them down somewhere, turn up the earth, and be surrounded by the lovely scents of garden work every day. Then I wouldn’t even give a second thought to stupid old cannoli.

-Lui