Betony and I have a strange tradition that we
haven’t yet shared here in the Almanac.

With the turn of each season we go and buy
scented candles.

For fall we will perhaps get an apple smell, pumpkin, or maybe cloves. Then for winter we almost always get one of those Christmas tree ones, and maybe a cinnamon/spice fragrance. Come spring we’ve found “cut grass” and various flowers while summer this year took us to “Margarita-vile”.

I know it seems superfluous and a bit silly, but we look forward to doing this each fall, winter, spring, and summer.

They say that the sense most connected with memory is that of smell. So it would make great sense that when the weather changes and we find ourselves in a new place in the year yet again, we would want to recall the past.

In doing so we bring to mind all the good we remember from the last year and let that color our coming days.

And by purchasing candles, sometimes revisiting the exact same smells, sometimes finding new perfumes to add change and variety,
we anchor our joy in taking on each new season.