The scents of spring and youth intertwine forever.

     It's was hard to make myself get out the door this morning, but when I did, the pleasant aroma of neighborhood crab trees in bloom drew me along from yard to yard and tree to tree; pinks to whites to reds.  It was intoxicating. I just followed my nose.  That spurred me on to trading the sidewalks for soft dirt trails at our nearby park. There I found thickets of wild plums in bloom.
     I love the spicy, overpoweringly sweet fragrance of wild plums. It always takes me back to childhood.  Thickets of plums grew in the roadside ditches and also surrounded the rural school, District 34, that we attended.  I don't know if they were the remnants of century-old hedgerows or just accidental tourists, but we kids loved them, and loved eating the little yellow/pink plums come autumn. To get to school every day we walked through the shelterbelt of trees behind the house, up a little rise and around the cistern, out across a field, and then  ducked through a break in the plum thickets along the road, and crossed over to school.
      Also, I was a big fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Remember the book, "On the Banks of Plum Creek?"  There is a little stream surrounded by plum thickets not far from here, which I have named "Plum Creek" in Wilder's honor.  Of course, nobody knows that but me and now you.
     Those Nebraska plum thickets of my youth are all gone now but for memories, which is why I enjoy these so much.  What scents of youth bring you back home again?

"Home is where one starts from."  --T.S. Eliot