This time of the year, it's impossible to walk down my street without noticing the fresh, slightly sweet scent of linden trees. Not that my street is lined with them. I'd say there's about a half dozen of them, mixed in with maples and a couple of gingkos. The largest of them is just up the street from me by the Metroland offices and, if I open my windows, I can smell it from my room.According to Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin's memoir, "An Albany Girlhood" (which I highly recommend...it's lack of polished narrative is outweighed by the wonderfully detailed accounts of upper class life in late 19th-century Albany), it was a local Dutch custom to plant a linden tree in front of one's home to commemorate the birth of a first child and, indeed, there was a large linden tree in front of her father's beautiful Elk Street house.
