Smellilicious

When you're driving about, the car tends to pick up any strong smells that you drive past. Whether it's the strong smell of rape seed in the summer, the smell of the local fish and chips or Indian restaurant, the smell of muck spreading in the nearby field, the salty smell of the sea as you drive down the sea front or a strong smell of smoke as you drive past someone having a bonfire. However, the smell of tea tree oil is certainly not a smell you expect to be sniffing.

As I was driving to school, there was a point where I suddenly realised that there was a strong smell of tea tree oil. I sort of dismissed it, thinking I was just doing the nasal equivalent of "seeing things", what with there being a field on one side, trees and a couple of houses on the other side, and the perfume factory a good five miles or so away, even as the crow flies. I thought nothing of it for the rest of the day as that is hardly the most pressing of matters in life. That was until I drove home at least.

On my way home, at exactly the same point along the road, I smelt it again. That strong, refreshing, unmistakable and rather nice smell of tea tree oil. Surely I can't just be "smelling things" if I've smelt it in the same place twice. However, I still don't get how on earth it smelt like tea tree oil. I'm not complaining as I love the smell of tea tree oil but smelling it there just doesn't make any sense. A muddy field on one side is hardly going to produce tea tree smells and I don't get why the farmer would substitute fertiliser for tea tree oil. The same with anything put on the road. As for the hedges and trees, unless they are a special variety that release the smell of tea tree (rather fittingly) every fifteen years, I don't think it was them either. (Also, Wikipedia tells me that tea tree oil "is taken from the leaves of the Melaleuca alternifolia, which is native to the northeast coast of New South Wales, Australia." So I don't think that covers the trees in Kent.) Furthermore, I don't think any house holds enough tea tree oil to cause a road to smell of it for a whole day, however strong it is.

So maybe I'm mad, maybe someone planted a Melaleuca alternifolia in the back of the car without me knowing, I don't know. Ideas?

DFTBA