Getting drunk...

with the strong smell coming from the linden trees that are everywhere in Florence! The last two-three weeks while traveling in my car I had the windows closed either because it was too hot and I had the A/C on in the car, or it was raining cats and dogs and I didn't even dare to slide them down a little bit.. Two days ago it was a mild day with some sunshine, but not extremely hot to force me to turn on the A/C, so I took down the window on my side of the car and got hit with a wall of strong smell: the linden tree flowers. My God, what a nice smell that is....

This smell takes me back to my school days in Istanbul.. In the evening, after dinner, me and my sister retreated to our room to finish our homework for the day after, and if it was winter, my mother came in after some time with a tray in her hands.. There used to be two glasses of linden flower infusion on that tray. The infusion was prepared with dried linden flowers, the peel of an apple and a lemon, a small piece of cinnamon bark and maybe one or two dried cloves. We put a spoonful of honey to sweeten the infusion and let it fill our stomach and nose with its strong aromas.

Every spring when I begin inhaling this extraordinary smell of the linden flowers I feel like going downtown with a pair of scissors in my hand and collecting these flowers to dry later and store away for the winter. These people do not know how to use these flowers that are practically everywhere! One of our neighbors had a linden tree in his garden and last year he cut it down! It was making too much shadow! What an excuse.... I loved to watch that tree from my kitchen. Oh, well, maybe I plant one in our garden in the future :-)