A Scented Home and a Winner!

So you want to know what 191 buttons looks like? Well, it looks like a lot more than this! Hang on folks, I'll get to the winner at the end of the post. I hope you can bear with me while I tell you about the sensory wonders of spring in the south of France... Just over a year ago I was getting frustrated by the visual nature of blogging, and wishing that I could give you an idea of the sounds that were defining my life as spring arrived. And this year it's smells! We've always adored this unsassuming bush outside the front (side) door, which bursts into flower at this time of the year and scents the night-time garden. It's an ornamental olive - it produces no useful fruit but the smell, particularly at night, is quite astonishing.

This year, prompted partly no doubt by books like Sensual Home and also Simple Abundance (which is all about the senses at the moment), I've been bringing more and more scented plants into the house. In this photo the olive was beginning to wilt, but it still smelled as wonderful, so I kept it there for a while!I also put rosemary twigs onto the front door wreath, which is becoming as ever-changing as my displays indoors - it's good to have a wreath that looks fine alone, or with additions if I have the time. It was great to sniff at it every time we entered the house!

I enjoyed my blogging break and it couldn't have come at a better time - three weeks after ending treatment for the horrid old thyroid virus, it came back again! However, this time my doctor and I knew the drill, and got the tests done and the appointment with the specialist almost before I started feeling ill. I am so, so grateful that I am already feeling well under treatment, and that I won't go back to the ghastly state I was in over January and February. So I got to vist some of your blogs, but not quite as many as I'd intended, given the circumstances. One blog I've loved but just CAN'T leave a message on, due to its spam blockers not liking my wanadoo.fr email address, is Andrea V's The Art of Home. Andrea, I've tried, but I can't find a way to get through to you, except for this! Very frustrating. Anyway - super blog and I'd have lots to comment on if only I could...

j

Is anyone still there? Would anyone like to know the winner of my 191 buttons and 191cm of crochet lace? Oh, you would? Thanks for holding on in there...

j

It's my eighth commenter, The Madhouse, and if you can think of a blogger who deserves it better, then maybe you havn't met the mum of this particular family! Please do email me your address, Jen, and I'll send off the buttons (ready counted) and the lace (still to be sorted), and maybe then see them appear on some of your creations!

j

I'll be back tomorrow with another wonderful scent just for May Day. Have a wonderful weekend, folks.