What are some of your favorite smells? Guess we could include sounds too...
There's a lot of scents that I love; all for different reasons. The smell of tar on a spring morning reminds me of the home I lived in until the age of 8. The city would spray tar on the gravel road in front of my house every spring to help keep the dust down and gravel in place. The smell of a rain storm coming. The smell of Turbo Blue fuel being burned in a hot rod. The smell of Georgio Armani Acqua Di Gio. Fresh clean laundry... fresh cut grass... sage, cedar, bergamot, patchouli (when mixed with much lighter and more citrus-like scents), sea salt in the air, fresh baked molasses cookies...
I could go on for miles with some of the scents I love. Many will trigger a memory. Some of those smells [along with the memory] makes me cry.
My favorite time of year is right about now and mid-May in Michigan. The smells and sounds, the perfect weather - still warm during the day and cool nights that are perfect for sleeping with all the windows open. The cicadas and crickets... although, I wish we had some frogs around too; you'd think being only about a dozen blocks from the Detroit River, we'd have some frogs, but we don't. The fall colors just beginning to peek from the maples. The smell of a campfire on a cool Friday evening and the sound of my kids talking about some random thing that popped into their heads or what they'd seen on Instagram, FB, TikTok, whatever earlier and laughing.
What smells and or sounds are your favorite?
**No politics, no riots, no murder discussions. There's no reason this should turn into any of those things!
Smells, sights, sounds... go!
BBQ, BEER, BUD, Certain Scents, that make none
Certain Pictures, Piles of CASH, Big Hunk of HASH, Brown or Blackened also fits into Smell favorites, like Suszy, at the C Sure
LOUD Rock Music, the woods at night on my quad, my local Waterfall, Freight Trains, that derail my trane of thought
That's pretty awesome too. The UP of MI is one of my favorite places for that woodsy smell.
SMELLS
Frying bacon
Garlic
Cinnamon
Cooking onions (yeah, I know, weird)
SOUNDS
Rumble of thunder
SIGHTS
A lot of people like the smell of cooking onions, they just might not know it.
The smell of virtually anything that has cinnamon in it being baked. The lopsided tongue hanging out the side of their mouth grins that my dogs give me after a good run. The sound of waves lapping at the shore or a good thunderstorm.
Yeah, I always love me a good thunderstorm. Unfortunately, my cat has other opinions of thunderstorms. My dog doesn't care either way.
Smell - lavender
Sight - Sunsets
Sound - Cats purring
My husband and I went to St. Croix for our honeymoon and got to watch the sunset while eating our dinner on the beach. It's something that I'll never forget. I'm so glad I surprised him with a Caribbean honeymoon.
I like the smell of a campfire or a fireplace burning and fresh cut grass.
Not sure where you live Sunshine, but in January in MI, when someone has their fireplace going, it's a very distinct smell. I love that too, but I could do without the 6+ months of cold and snow!!!
I am a Michigander too. There are a few us around here.
Yes the winters get longer as I get older.
Ah ha! I'm just south of Detroit.
Between Lansing and Grand Rapids here. When I was a little kid, we still had coal fired locomotives. Always liked that smell. Where we live now, we have a steam and gas club (old steam powered tractors and harvesters). Every week or so they fire them up. Both the smoke and the old steam whistles make me think of the earlier time. Besides the new cut grass smell, I also like the smell of baking bread. That's what a home is supposed to smell like.
I know roughly where you live TTGA.
When I go to Henry Ford Museum, the smell of that train is pretty awesome.
peppermint, pumpkin, i like the smell of bleach, pine.
thunder, church bells
You like CLEAN smell then. You and my mother would get along famously.
There's a church about a block from my house and at 6am and 6pm every day, those church bells go off. On Saturdays they often go off for a wedding or a Baptism and of course Sunday and Wednesday mass. That was the church that we had my grandmother's funeral mass. We're all a bunch of lapsed Catholics or non-religious at all, but it was for her and it was the most beautiful church I've ever seen.
I do a lot of cleaning with bleach. I like the smell too.
Don't laugh but I like the smell of skunk as it's fading. Not that first pungent blast, but a few days after the skunk has exploded his stink bomb.
I like the sound of trains
I like skunk smell too. But nowadays, it's often difficult to determine if it's actually a skunk or the "Mary Jane"
Nobody laugh but the smell of Patchouli reminds me of a dear friend I have not seen in years. And I love the smell of Autumn - not sure what it is exactly but I love it.
Autumn leaves for sights. They are just so beautiful.
The sound of a saxophone gets my motor running. VROOM VROOM....
Patchouli reminds me of a friend of mine too; she wears it often.
Favorite smell: The air. After it rains.
Favorite sound: When I hear my wife laughing or singing to herself.
That's so dear!
MsAubrey - Thank you for posting such a great article!
OK, I'll confess that I like the smell of diesel fuel!
One of my favorite memories of smells from childhood was burning leaves in autumn. We'd sit on the ground at a safe distance savoring Milky Way bars that Mom gave us. We can't burn leaves anymore, so my replacement is burning logs in my fireplace in autumn and winter. Other favorites are cinnamon, pine, vanilla, and my wife's favorite perfumes - Caleche and Arpege.
Sights: sunrises/sunsets on a beach, watching shooting stars on a clear night from my porch.
Sounds: waves gently lapping onto the shore, babies' and little children's laughter
Can't say the same, but maybe it's because I've taken a diesel "shower" if you will. Farm diesel at that. I like that rattle sound of a diesel though.
Hmmm best smells, vanilla tops the list but gotta admit it's followed closely by baking bread, grilling burgers and wood fires (unless it's a whole forest fire, that gets to be a little chokie)
ahh, smells. There are so many. Smells are so deeply tied to memory.
Fresh cut alfalfa (better than fresh cut grass IMO)
Fresh cut hard woods (cherry and maple are my favorites)
The smell both right before and the clean right after a big rain/thunder storm
Spring mornings
Fall as the leaves are turning
Melting chocolate
Coffee Brewing
A freshly washed baby
Fresh baked bread
A hard wood fire (and anything I am cooking in my smoker)
There are so many more smells that I love but time is short.
That first cup of coffee in the morning is a great scent!
Yes they are.
I loved the smell of the apple wood from my apple trees. We had to cut them down, because they were right next to our driveway and not only were they at the end of their lifespan as far as apple trees go, we had apples dropping on our cars all the time and bees constantly all over the place. I figured that the purple robe locust tree would be enough for the bees even if we got rid of the apple trees. I loved the smell of the cut wood and the burning of that wood!
Oh and I don't live anywhere near alfalfa, so I wouldn't know that scent.
This is a great article MsAubrey!
Cinnamon, carnations, bread baking, ivory soap, spaghetti sauce cooking, garlic, morning glories. A perfume my grandma used to use, I think it was called Moonwind from Avon. Too many to list.
I think my favorite sound would be rain on a metal roof... so relaxing
I almost forgot, sheets that hung out In the sun to dry. Always good for a great nights sleep!
You can't duplicate that smell or feel with anything else.
No you can’t. It’s wonderful. Something most kids today have never had the pleasure of experiencing.
Especially when it's REAL linen!
Brisket in the smoker. With mesquite wood chips.
MMMM... that's making me hungry!
I could spend all day filling pages with examples of those favourite memories, but I'll name just one for each sense, all of which I know I'll never experience again:.
For sound - way back in the days of steam trains, the deep mournful whistle of a distant train at night
For smell - while walking in snowshoes in winter through a country cedar forest, a waft of wood smoke from a distant farmhouse.
I'll add a sight - the sparkling crystal world on a cold sunny day after a freezing rain.
I love the smell of cedar! And in MI, those iced trees are very pretty.
In Dearborn MI, you can still hear those train whistles; albeit it's only during the day.
Wild honeysuckle wafting across the yard in the summer.
Freshly cut grass.
Freshly cut wood.
I think my one of my favorite sounds is a thunderstorm when I'm home and safe and sound.
Fresh cut hay is nice but even bales smell good and Cow manure it reminds me of my grandparents farm. I like a pine forest, the ocean, and charcoal BBQ.
My stepdad's mom had a cow named Blackie. One time when we went to visit (Bloomfield, MO), while eating dinner, I had asked where Blackie was because I would feed her by hand... I was only about 12 at the time. She told me that we were eating her. I cried as I ate the most delicious hamburger of my life; I mourned my friend as I ate her.
Wow... take that out of context and that would be BAD!!
See, my great grandma (my dad's grandma on his dad's side) and that part of my family owned a maple syrup farm... completely different smell.
Aubrey, my grandpa had a rule that his kids could name all of the milk cows and the horses, but not the bulls, sheep, chickens or pigs. That was reinforced in me by a pet rabbit when I was a kid. As he stated it, "Never get emotionally involved with something that you intend to eat".
We were only there once a year or so; so, it wasn't like I had the chance to learn that since I was rarely on a farm with animals. I still ate it. It was so delicious. I'd like to think that she would've wanted it that way. A vegetarian friend of mine asked me if my kids knew how their meat became their food. I said, yeah... so, I put my son and daughter on speaker phone and asked them to tell me how their hamburgers were made. My son said, "They're from cows." Then, I asked how that cow dies to be our food. He says, "They bash 'em in the skull."
I don't lie to my kids. She thought that if they knew how they got their meat, they wouldn't eat it. My daughter said, "Yeah, and they cut the heads off of the chickens." 
Smell: Fresh cut grass, ocean
Sound: running river, ocean waves
Love the sound of ocean waves. A running river just makes me have to pee.
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" Just kidding. A great line by Robert Duvall from the movie Apocalypse Now. Seriously though, I love the smell of rain in the desert after a summer rain.
I know EXACTLY where that line came from.
Only been to the desert once and it never rained while I was there. I was sent to Las Vegas for work to change out springs and shocks for testing on HMMWVs in Henderson.
Here's an odd one for ya - the smell of the popcorn in the movie theater.
MMMMM! Movie theater popcorn!
The salt & the butter - it's deadly, but I used to love it!
I have freak genetics on both sides of my family. We can eat that stuff and smoke cigarettes and drink and still live to be in our 80s and 90s.
The way I liked it is not good for anyone. All of that stuff on it made it very high in cholesterol. I simply can't eat the way I used to.
Yeah, I like to air pop mine and put REAL melted butter and some salt on it, but I don't soak it in butter.
Sounds good to me.
The smell of popcorn anywhere makes me want some.
The smell of it is enticing. I haven't had it in a long time.
Anyone like the smell of their own farts? Asking for a friend.... no? Alrighty then...moving along...
I enjoy the SOUND of my own farts sometimes... it's quite amusing.
Yes, I can be like a 6 year old sometimes.
True. Although the silent but deadly approach is also quite amusing. The retching, the gagging, the desperate attempt to ascertain the source and separate from it. Crowd control 101 in my humble opinion.
Yeah, when me and my husband go shopping together, albeit it's been a long time we did so, he or I will warn the other if we crop dusted an aisle. It's really fun to watch someone walk into the fog.
On a more serious and less pungent note, the smells of a baseball field remind me of my childhood playing little league ball. The freshly cut grass, the smell of the leather glove, hell even the faint cigarette smoke from the bleachers.
And the chalk lines.
LOL - What movie was that where the guy was snorting up the chalk lines on the ball field?
I don't remember.
The smell of lilac on a warm summer day.
the sound of a loon calling across the lake at sunset.
Or a wolf howling on a winters day.
I LOVE the sound of loons.
I forgot about that one. The long wail of the loon echoing from down the lake on a misty daybreak, as I sat out on the dock watching the sun rise, while sipping Gull Lake coffee (2/3 strong brewed coffee, 1/3 Baillie's Irish Cream) from a big mug.
It isn't easy to paint a mental picture so clear and so serene that it can be enjoyed by all 5 senses. But you appear to have done it with that comment my friend.
But we had a lilac bush right between our front door and side door when I was growing up and I was stung by so many bees... I do love the smell of lilac, but it just reminds me of how many times I was stung as a kid too.
Smells: Just about any fragrant flower,shrub, or tree. Iris, carnations, roses, and linden tree. The smells of green beans or tomatoes being canned.
Sounds: The roar of large round radial airplane engines, that special sound of dual "glasspack" mufflers "wrapping up" and "backing down", thunder, and children's laughter.
Sights: The stars under dark skies, lightening, the Colorado mountains and the Canyonlands of Utah, big smiles from pretty ladies
Radial aircraft engines are absolutely fantastic, aren't they? They make so much power too! A friend of mine had a friend that was a pilot and we rented a small Cessna from a local place. While we were waiting for his pilot friend to do the safety checks, we were checking out some of the other aircraft. My friend said, "Hey, should we say something about that cargo plane leaking oil?" I said, "Nope. It's a radial, if it's not leaking, it doesn't have oil." I went to school for aircraft maintenance and repair right out of high school. I did all my work ahead of time in my recip. engines class just so I could work on a radial and see if I (with 2 other students) could get it running; it was on a "buck" stand. We did and it was AWESOME!
My son loves pumpkin pie. I think that's why he loves Thanksgiving.
He's 12 and I don't remember a time when he didn't love pumpkin pie. He'll leave the cakes and other pies alone... but pumpkin, I usually have to make 2 just so he can eat one almost completely by himself. He's super skinny too... You wouldn't know he eats like that.