Summer senses
A new series on the joys of the season,
This kicks off our summer series revisiting the smells and sounds of summer — those unmistakable triggers that take you back to a fond memory of this fleeting season. The scent of freshly mown grass is unforgettable. You can keep your suntan lotion, your asphalt, your G-and-Ts.
For me, fresh-cut grass is the defining scent of summer.
I don’t mean the artificial odours peddled by various perfumers and candle- makers, such as the Man Can pillar that promises “the smell of fresh cut grass without all the work.”
(Ha! There are no shortcuts. To get the smell of a newly mowed lawn, you actually have to mow the lawn.)
One whiff of cut grass brings to mind dripping popsicles and cartwheeling in bare feet. It’s pure nostalgia. Also, a newly shorn lawn makes playing tag more fun and flopping down with a book more comfortable. (Long grass makes for lumpy blankets.)
It is also what I would use to explain the colour green to a blind person, an associative sense workaround.
Turns out grass makes that smell because it is wounded and dying, the lawn’s equivalent of the train station scene in Gone with the Wind.
Cutting the blades releases greenleaf volatile compounds, a kind of chemical first-aid that stimulates regrowth. Humans may like and even benefit from the aroma — Australian neuroscientist Nick Lavidis bottles and sells it as a relaxing aid — but it’s bad news for the grass.
I didn’t know any of this until recently. As a teen, I would volunteer to mow the lawn for the gratification of producing tidiness, even if my white tennis shoes turned green.
“The only rule, besides don’t run over the power cord, was: You can’t quit in the middle,” remembers my stepfather. (He’s thinking of my sheltered friend Rob, who first tried mowing at our house. He did three rows and gave up.)
Later came decades of living amidst downtown concrete. When we moved to Etobicoke eight years ago, I fell in love again with the smell of cut grass — but grew to hate the sound of motorized mowers. Or at least the sound at 8 a.m. on a Saturday.
A lawn-cutting service now tames our backyard in less than 10 minutes. Does the grassy smell get tiresome to professionals?
“Not me. It brings me back to my childhood. The smell of cut grass in the spring meant my father would bring out my bike and then — freedom,” says landscaper Peter Guillaumier, 61.
George Clooney got a riding mower from wife Amal for his 55th birthday this year.
He’ll use it to trim the sprawling front lawn of his $19-million (Canadian) English country manor.
But not even a millionaire Oscarwinner could enjoy the scent of fresh-cut grass more than us. apataki@thestar.ca, Twitter @amypataki Next week, reporter Lauren Pelley recalls the unmistakable smell of a wet dog.