Balsam in the air!

One of the great things about spending so much time in Riverside Park, NYC, walking my dog, Starling, in mid-January is that the park is a drop off point for all of the Christmas Tree corpses left over on the Upper West Side of Manhattan after the holidays have finished.

And once they have sufficient piles of them, the Park Authority begins to mulch the whole lot, creating huge piles of mulch. And then they begin to spread it all around the mid 80s.

And the great thing about that is the wonderful sense of balsam thick in the air as you walk past. This is one of my favorite scents in general. I love the balsam from the trees that line the streets of NYC after Thanksgiving, when the tree sellers bring in 1000s upon 1000s of trees to be sold for Christmas. It is such a refreshing natural scent that brings calm and peace and elevated spirit.

Walking past the huge mulch piles today, after the snow has melted and the scent of the mulch is still fresh and strong, was so strong that I felt transported into an oasis of scent driven beauty. I couldn't get enough of it, the smell was that wonderful.