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Science claims that the strongest trigger for our memories is our olfactory sense. Just a slight whiff of a perfume, chocolate, the ocean, for example, instantly brings memories to our mind. So it was with my grandfather’s basement and home in general. He lived in the area between Glenmont and Olney, a little north of Silver Spring, where I grew up. In those days of the 1950s, visiting my grandfather was an excursion to the countryside. Now, of course, it’s part of the typical Washington area suburbs.
Going to my grandfather’s basement to grab a jar of peaches or to help my grandmother carry her laundry upstairs was an intense olfactory experience. First, the creaky wooden stairs always smelled of freshly cut wood, even many years later. At the bottom of the stairs, another scent almost stopped me in my tracks. Granddad had a peach orchard, was an avid gardener and sometimes grew fields of corn or other produce. In the basement was a tall, white and somewhat well-used metal locker-style cabinet that stored all varieties of insecticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers and the like. Their acrid aroma was unmistakable, and to this day when I walk through some nurseries’ garden shops, I’ll still catch that scent, and I am transported to another time. I did not find the aroma unpleasant then; it made me think of earthy things and the sense of freedom being “out in the country.”
The peach orchard was a smorgasbord of natural scents stemming from the dusty trails through the neat rows of peach trees, the various weeds, and the peaches themselves. Then there was the tired tractor that carried loads of peach bushel baskets to his roadside produce stand. As far back as I recall, that tractor had no visible paint; only various shades of rust that, I swear, you could actually smell.
When the overflowing bushels of peaches reached his stand, we’d carefully place them in pecks or half-pecks and other wooden baskets (each with its own woody scent) for display for customers. My grandfather had a routine he’d perform when there was a skeptical customer, particularly those who doubted that the peaches were fully ripe, juicy and sweet. He’d ask the customer to pick any peach from any basket, then using his two thumbs, would split the peach perfectly in half, never damaging its fuzzy skin, and the two halves so utterly intact it looked as though they’d been cut with a sharp knife. He’d then offer the peach for the customer to taste. Once they did, they needed no further convincing. The customer would always come through with a purchase and explore his other offerings. When I smell a peach, this entire scene appears vividly in my mind.
In later years, he sold the peach orchard portion of his property, and it became a commercial nursery. But his love of nature switched to his rose garden. Those were the days before horticulturalists bred roses more for their appearance or easy care than their classic rose scent. The rose garden was an oval with small boxwoods marking the perimeter, while myriad varieties of roses filled the garden. Usually, in late spring, he’d put down a layer of straw around the roses.
Consequently, the about-to-bloom garden would smell of fresh hay. And when the roses did finally bloom in all their pastel glories, they released a startlingly pleasant scent to match their stunning beauty. People who drove by his home would stop and ask what he did to boast such floriferous and lovely roses. Often, they’d take photos. I often wondered why I seldom saw Japanese beetles on his roses, and then I remembered that cabinet in his basement with all those gardening chemicals. And I wondered as well, how many of those smelly chemicals can no longer be sold. Regardless, they were treasured memories, kept alive and fresh with the right scent.
Steve Lloyd may be found caring for his scented flowers and shrubs. He may be reached at splloyd941@comcast.net.
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