Smells like...

Memories are tied to smells. The smell of fresh baked yeast bread takes me back to Sunday dinners back home in my childhood. A favorite combination of smells and memories for me goes like this.
It's a misty Summer morning, early. The sun had not climbed over the hills yet. I stand inside an old tobacco barn on my grandparents' farm. The dew on the grass smells fresh and clean. The damp earth under my feet smells a little of axle grease from the old International Harvester Farm-all Cub tractor, and a little like manure from the livestock. With the sunrise, beginning to warm everything, come the aromas of the musty barn wood, the apple tree right outside hanging low with a variety of yellow apple, a slight cider smell from the fallen fruit that's beginning to rot, being partly hollowed out by yellow-jackets, and the grass changes from that dewy-fresh smell to a warmer, dryer odor that beckons me to go lie down and take a nap in it. But it's almost breakfast. I hurry back to the house where my grandmother has been up for hours. Coffee! It perks in the old stove-top percolator pot sending a heavenly scent into the air. Bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, fresh baking powder biscuits in the oven, and a newly opened jar of molasses join the chorus of smells. Soap is next, in the water in the hand-wash pan on the back porch, then on my hands as I partially dry them and find my chair at the table.
Soon there will be a bouquet of flower scents as my grandmother strolls out after breakfast to tend her many, many brightly colored blooming plants. There are sunflowers standing tall, geraniums, chrysanthemums, roses of all colors and types, a snowball bush, lilacs, and one of her favorite, creeping phlox. Then we traipse up to the strawberry patch to gather the last of the ripe berries. That's a delicious olfactory sensation! I eat a few as we pick, and grandma puts the rest in the fold in her apron, where she carries everything.
Early Summer mornings on the farm - I can go back there from time to time, with just a few simple smells to take me.