The faintest flower scents are the best. You find yourself longing for just a little more, and you bury your face in the flowers and try to draw out a stronger breath of balm. Apple blossoms, certain Violets, and Pansies have this pale perfume.
In the front yard of my childhood's home grew a Larch, an exquisitely graceful tree, one now little planted in Northern climates. I recall with special delight the faint fragrance of its early shoots. The next tree was a splendid pink Hawthorn. What a day of mourning it was when it had to be cut down, for trees had been planted so closely that many must be sacrificed as years went on and all grew in stature.
There are some smells that are strangely pleasing to the country lover which are neither from fragrant flower nor leaf; one is the scent of the upturned earth, most heartily appreciated in early spring. The smell of a ploughed field is perhaps the best of all earthy scents, though what Bliss Carman calls "the racy smell of the forest loam" is always good. Another is the burning of weeds of garden rakings,
"The spicy smoke
Of withered weeds that burn where gardens be."
A garden "weed-smother" always makes me think of my home garden, and my father, who used to stand by this burning weed-heap, raking in the withered leaves. Many such scents are pleasing chiefly through the power of association.
Thyme-covered Graves.
The sense of smell in its psychological relations is most subtle:—