Smells of the Season

I can smell autumn. There was wood smoke in the air even when the day was warm and sunny. Pumpkin, apple and cinnamon baked goods must be on the menus of the shops and eateries nearby because I can detect those among the other cooking smells. There's a dry dusty smell of brittle leaves and a slightly sour one in the wet places where it is decay not dust to which things have returned.

We're getting denser produce from CSA. No more delicate lettuces, this week it's chard, and the shell beans have appeared with their coat of stippled red. I trimmed a turnip and held it under Steve's nose. "It smells like the earth" I said. "It smells like nothing" he said.

He's wrong. it smells like earth and autumn and the harvest season. Irish genes will out every day, either that or Steve fried his olfactory cells on all those years of garlic. Turnips are far more subtle. They have to be. They spend the year tucked under cover with scanty unimpressive foliage and usually make their way into stews much later in the season. They are winter food.

Although I've never verified this, folk tradition has it that turnips were carved into spirit lamps at Halloween, Samhain and All Souls to welcome the departed and light their way. They are far more durable than pumpkins, so I can believe that they served the purpose well in the damp Celtic lands where rot must come quickly to something as fleshy as a pumpkin. Turnips are perfect for the dark time of the year, whether as food or lights for the dead. As for now, night has deepened and the windows are closed against the chill, just the skylights open in our bedroom. Where it smells like autumn. . .