If you’ve changed residences during your lifetime, you know that it takes a few weeks to grow accustomed to the strange sounds of your new home: both inside noises ~ like the refrigerator, heating/cooling/plumbing systems ~ and outside noises ~ traffic, people living near you and their pets (or, if your place is in the country, wild animals). Before you realize it, these sounds become familiar, evidenced by the fact that you may no longer wake up when your neighbors close their door on the way out to work in the morning or when they start their car. The sounds have become integrated in your mind as safe background noise.
The human ear is amazingly engineered to recognize 400,000 different sounds. It is also on heightened alert to any unfamiliar sound, particularly when it triggers warning.
The other day while I was out in the potting shed, I heard the gentle sound of a light shower on the stepping-stones and fallen leaves … faint, though not of water, like thousands of sprinkles. Upon closer look, I saw tiny seeds carpeting the ground and discovered that they were coming from the spiky seedpods of the liquid amber tree overhead.
True, its mace-like pods may be annoying to step on, but the tree’s summer shade and brilliant autumn foliage more than compensate. So over and above enjoying il dolce suono of liquid amber seedfall, I’m pleased to know that a 400,001st sound has been automatically integrated into my symphonic memory!
Photo above rt ~ Liquid Amber Seedfall.
il dolce suono (It. “the sweet sound”)
