Brief Moments of Nasal Bliss

It does not happen every day.  It does not happen every hour.  It does not happen very often.  But, every once in awhile, I can smell again!

The first time it happened was at the Walton Ranch branding.  Positioned downwind from the red hot branding iron, the head holder – a strong man, willing to anchor calf heads and legs – held the braying calf’s head while I injected a large needle’s worth of growth hormones into that calf’s ear.  If it was a steer calf, he was going through as well the ordeal of being castrated during this life changing moment.  The white smoke surrounded us as we tried to time it just right, sucking in the clean air, before the brand hit the hair and hide, holding our breath until either our job was completed or the smoke cloud moved by.  That was when I smelled the acrid smell of singed hair and burning flesh.

Weird, right?  How strange that this should be my first recognizable smell after the polyps were removed out of my over clogged sinuses.  I was in disbelief all morning until we walked up to the lunch area and there – I smelled a smell again.  The smell of hot vegetable oil, which I was certain was vegetable oil, heated and cooking potatoes for our lunch.  Mmmmmm, that was a good smell.

Since then, I’ve had a most memorable day of smelling last Sunday.  Odors of cut dandelions, oozing with sap as I chopped down their yellow bobbing heads, smelling their dandelion smell wafting up to my position on the lawnmower.  I took a few of my bees with them, sadly.  Dirt.  The sweet earthen smell of dirt as I dug one more hole to plant the asparagus roots which I over-ordered this year in my zeal to have asparagus.  I am certain I now have over 200 asparagus crowns in the ground.  That is the strangest word to spell.  Asparagus.  The dirt smelled fine.

That night, I peeled garlic cloves and drug them across my fine rasp, shearing off paper thin wafers of the aromatic herb. Garlic.  I smell garlic, I swooned to the garlic, as I inhaled deeply.  “Garlic, you smell so good!”

And then the wine.  I could smell the wine.  The rich smell of an inky Petite Sarah.  Will I have a “nose” now when I go wine tasting?!  What a concept!  Someone else can start driving!! 

One can live without one’s sense of smell.  You won’t lose weight, you will still eat enough to keep you “substantial” (as I was once called by a loving friend).  It is one of the senses, but really, if you had to lose a sense, this is the one to lose.  I have been just fine without my sense of smell.  But now that it is back – even if just for ever so brief moments – I have come to appreciate my sense of smell like never before. 

Mmmmm, everything smells so good when I can smell!!

BEE HEAVEN