The Recipe of Four Scents

On their way back, Puschel and Flauschi stopped at the open garden kitchen. The weather wind was almost quiet, and after the long relay Puschel’s tummy rumbled so loudly that even the spoons in their jar seemed to listen.

They placed four leaf bowls on the table: strawberries and blossoms for spring, mint and yellow fruit for summer, apple pieces and cinnamon for autumn, and ice-cold winter berries. A differently coloured trail of scented steam rose from each bowl.

Puschel smelled the strawberries first. The pink steam travelled to the golden mint, from there to the orange-red apple scent and finally to the icy-blue berry mist. Above the table, the four petals of the glass flower lit in exactly the same rhythm.

Flauschi carefully slid the last bowl into place and pointed along the row. Flauschi“Spring, summer, autumn, winter,” she said. Puschel raised the tasting spoon. Puschel“Checked twice: by the wind and by breakfast. That makes it a particularly reliable sequence.”

They ate a small snack and carried the four wooden tiles back to the season wheel. There they arranged blossom, sun, leaf and snowflake around the hub in the order they had discovered. They did not turn anything yet. In the evening light, the wheel waited for morning—and for the shared repair that would finally bring the garden back into balance.