It's always nice to learn that there's a word for something you love, and here's a new word I learned the other day:'Petrichor'. It describes that particular smell of earth after rain. This has always evoked a sort of nostalgic yearning for me- memories of the family garden I played in as a child- (a garden which seems huge in my memory, but probably wasn't). I think there is also a German word 'Heimweh' which describes this sort of longing; it's more than nostalgia or sentiment, and is a kind of yearning for something irretrievable, perhaps a sense of place and belonging, tinged with ineffable loss.
Certainly these last few days with summer leaving, and the rains and winds of autumn arriving, there's been plenty of opportunity to experience the particular heimweh of rain soaked earth.
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