The smell of springtime...

I smelled it today!
As I was walking out of work today on my lunch break, I smelled the distinct smell that tells me it is spring time...
It is not the smell of flowers or a crisp breeze, but it is the smell of... ladybugs.

When I was little my family lived right around the corner from my elementary school. There was a girl in my neighborhood who lived a few streets down and was older than me. She actually babysat for us a bunch of times... but I first met her as she was walking by my house. She was carrying a gerbil cage filled with grass... and LADYBUGS!!! She told me that she would walk over to the elementary school, search around the grassy fields, and find as many lady bugs as she could and put them in her cage for safe keeping. As a 6 year old little girl... I was HOOKED!
The nicest thing ever is that she found me a gerbil cage also and we would walk down to the school together and crawl around in the grass and find hundreds and hundreds of ladybugs.

Now every time I smell that particular combination of dirt and grass and spring time, I think of ladybugs and remember a very magical adventure I had into the insect world.