the scent of the season

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, or is it? It’s my first Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere and already the invitations for holiday BBQ’s are piling up. Rather than holly berries, I have tomato vines on my porch about to burst with shiny red fruit.

Roses are in bloom and the scent of night jasmine fills the air on our evening walks. No corner stands bursting with Vermont pines and mistletoe like in Manhattan, but lavender hedges nestled between citrus trees line the sidewalks.

In an attempt to bring some sense of the holiday spirit into our sparsely decorated beachside apartment, I had to resort to replacing our normal citrus toilet freshener with a forest pine one. Now I get a whiff of the proper New England Christmas spirit every time I flush.