Manure fertilizer (Photo credit: eutrophication&hypoxia)
Ah, yes, Spring…the time of year when a young man’s fancy turns to love and a not-so-young woman’s thoughts turn to the overpowering smell of cow-sh*t, in polite society referred to as ’manure‘ in the air.
I live in a small town in Atlantic Canada….a town on the border between the two provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, a town where farmers and farm animals have been around for eons and where farmers figured out years and years ago that manure is a great natural fertilizer that prepares gardens and fields for outstanding crop yields if applied liberally to the soil in the spring.
And as I mentioned before….spring has sprung in Atlantic Canada.
12.75 bags of leaves (Photo credit: spablab)
I ought to know–I’ve been outside raking gazillions of leaves from my flower beds and off my sorry-excuse-for-a-lawn, and have coerced my #1 son into sucking the raked leaves up with a leaf vacuum that also mulches them, and then filling a Costco-sized-warehouse-full of leaf bags with the torn up soggy mess. Yes, spring is definitely here.
But late yesterday afternoon I decided to leave my leaf-filled yard and driveway and head to a local grocery store to pick up a few supplies for supper…nothing major or ‘haute cuisine…beans and wieners and brown bread because I am a rather lazy not-so-young woman who actually tired out very quickly from all the leaf raking going on in said-yard and desired a quick and easy supper as a reward for my labors.
All went fine on my way to the store: the hordes of elderly people who normally impede my drive around town by creeping along in front of me at two miles an hour were nowhere to be seen–they were, presumably, at home already chowing down on their suppers…after all it was almost four PM. But alas, I still had promises to keep, and piles of leaves to bag before I sleep, and piles of leaves to bag before I sleep, so I knew that I must forge ahead to the grocery store, and to the liquor store, but that is a whole OTHER post to write another day.
Anyway, I drove into the parking lot conveniently located adjacent to both the grocery store and the liquor store, opened my driver’s door conveniently located beside me, the driver, and exited the vehicle….and that’s when it hit me.
Hold your nose and… (Photo credit: net_efekt)
An overpowering stench of…well, what can I say except to call it as I smelled it…manure…cow-sh*t. Yes, both the grocery store and the liquor store were downwind from several farms skirting my town, and apparently the farm owners had been up early that day, too, taking advantage of the beautiful weather by not raking leaves but by spreading pungent manure over their gardens and fields.
It was at that moment that I wished I was one of the elderly people of Sackville who moseys around town at two miles an hour and who by this time of day was at home with windows shut, enjoying a four PM supper of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich rather than suffering through the sinus-clearing odor of manure greeting them in a parking lot. Almost made me duck back into my car and head home, food-less and alcohol-less.
A postcard (circa 1911) depicting a man and a women dressed in the fashion of the era. Woman wears a hobble skirt, man points to her with his thumb. Caption: The Hobble Skirt “What’s that? It’s the speed-limit skirt!” (Caption makes joke in reference to the fact that such skirts prevented rapid walking.) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But I persevered…held my breath…and made a run, well, not really a run but more of a hobble hobble hop for the doorway of the nearest building, which, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on whether you most wanted food or alcohol, was the grocery store and almost plowed into the automatic door because it didn’t open as quickly as I needed it to, before I finally exhaled inside the store, all the while hoping that nobody in the vicinity of my cart would think that the odor that drifted into the store with me actually came from me.
I bought my groceries, made another quick hobble hobble hop next door to the liquor store for a wee barrel of wine, and then hightailed it to my car, where I immediately shut the doors, cranked the engine over and turned on the air conditioning.
Big mistake. I didn’t realize, or if I did realize then I forgot, that the air conditioning would not only fill my vehicle with cool air but in this case would fill it with cool cow-sh*t smelling air!
Turn air conditioner off. Leave parking lot as quickly as possible. Head home. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. Pull into driveway at home and exit vehicle. Enter home, sweet home.
Take a deep, cleansing breath. Realize that the kitchen windows that I had opened earlier in the day before the wind apparently decided to shift were now entry points for the odoriferous assault of spring smells coming from the farms that outskirt my little town.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! There is apparently no escape this time of year. There is nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.
And so, I figured that if I have to smell this smell I thought it would be nice to share it with you, my dear friends, and that is why I wish that Word Press had a scratch-and-sniff widget that I could install into my blog. Wouldn’t it be great to be thrown right into the smell-of-things?
What do you say, Word Press gurus…is it possible? I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it is.
My newest spring fashion statement.
In the meantime, thanks for dropping by to visit. Sorry if I smell.
And don’t be a stranger, okay?
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