Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you a rant, and some other things as well. You may remember me from such posts as “Retro Spring”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
If the path under the arbor looks like it’s been raked, that’s because it has. We’ve been very busy today.
The first thing that happened today, though, after my walk and the guy I live with’s breakfast, is that a book arrived. A book he’d been looking forward to reading in the coming weeks.
You should have heard what he said when he opened the package.
The book smelled of some kind of perfumey disinfectant. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, but the guy I live with said it stank so badly he couldn’t hold it in his hands, and so put it in a plastic bag with some baking soda (in a spice bag), hoping the stench would disappear.
And he made a resolution to buy books locally from now on. The pandemic changed the way he bought things, but he said now it’s time to go back to the old ways.
I’ll continue this theme, but first I want to show you some plants in the garden.
The guy I live with was sad to see what had happened to this cactus. He grew it from seed about twenty-five years ago.
It’s dead. Probably killed by the rain we had last December.
There are snowdrops, of course; mostly flowering later than usual.
This is Galanthus nivalis.
This is Crocus chrysanthus ‘Snowbunting’, a month late. It was raised by E.A.Bowles and is still one of the best.
A species Iris reticulata.
One of the tuberous geraniums from Iran (yes, an Iranian geranium) is up, all over the place.
Speaking of all over the place, the guy I live with was mildly surprised to see what Corydalis glaucescens had done. Despite the fact that this is said to grow in the shade of shrubs on north-facing slopes in places like Xinjiang and Kazakhstan, it obviously does very well on this south-facing slope. It’s self-fertile, unlike some other species here.
Pretty funny, in a way, because the others in this same garden are not easy to grow at all. Not even slightly. I know because of what I hear the guy I live with say.
Well, so, anyway, the guy I live with spent a few hours cutting down more grasses and stuff, using his fancy Japanese grass sickle.
It’s carbon steel, so it takes a serious edge. (I could do a rant for the guy I live with about carbon versus stainless steel, but maybe later.) It wasn’t very expensive, but is a wonderful tool.
He opened a new box of trash bags, and I thought he was going to throw up. The ensuing language was a bit much for my tender ears.
“The world”, he said, “has gone mad. Perfumed trash bags?”
It’s bad enough, he said, that people today wear so much “fragrance” you can smell them from twenty-five feet away (our neighbors, are, of course, much, much worse in that respect); people need to be able to breathe. Breathing is pretty important.
“Why”, he asked, “are all these sickeningly strong ‘fragrances’ suddenly a thing?”
And now we have perfumed trash bags.
The smell was on his hands, and it wouldn’t wash off. “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this stench clean from my hand?” he cried, standing at the sink. Eventually after several washings, I think the smell was gone.
The patio and the garden, though, reek.
Fortunately the guy I live with has an ample supply of masks.
A lot of what was cleaned up today went into the trash bag rather than the compost pile.
We could smell the trash bag even when it was out in the garden. The guy I live with said that if Sartre were writing Nausea today, it would have been about existential trash bags.
The guy I live with might give the rest of the bags to a neighbor who doesn’t mind the smell, if someone like that actually exists.
We purebred border collies, I hasten to add, almost always smell fresh and clean.
And that, dear friends, is my partially-ranting post for today.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
OH MY! I SO GET IT! However, I am surprised to hear that someone else noticed. No one else with whom I am acquainted seems to be bothered by it. At Felton Covered Bridge Park, where Rhody occasionally takes me to walk, there is a box of perfumed poop bags on a post on the edge of the parking lot. I can smell them when I get out of the car. Not only is the fragrance weirdly strong, but it is so weirdly unnecessary. I know that it can not totally mask the aroma of what the bags are intended to contain. But that is not the worst of it. People who use these weirdly aromatic bags (not directly, but for the canine people with whom they walk) toss the full bags off into the vegetation near the walkways. I can smell them everywhere we go in the park. The so-called ‘mess’ left by those who do not ‘pick up after’ the canine people with whom they walk is less aromatic. I actually do not notice it. Without bags, it merely gets absorbed into the ecosystem. So, people actually put effort into putting something that is natural and easily absorbed into the ecosystem into a non-biodegradable bag with an objectionable aroma, and then leave it in the park! It makes no sense. Human people really should clean up after the canine people they work for, but then take it away. The few who do not do not really cause much of a problem in such a forested situation.
Well, we’ve never encountered perfumed poop bags here;the guy I live with uses BioBags, which are biodegradable.
He always has them in his pocket, and so once, when he was with friends in another garden, there was a question of collecting some seeds, but no one had any bags, except the ones in the guy I live with’s pocket. So that was handy.
There’s a place just to the north of here where no one picks up anything. It’s pretty gross.
What is worse is when they do that downtown! It is always the biggest and most expensive breeds. I suppose that those who can purchase expensive breeds need not pick up after them. I still think that it is odd that human people actually ‘purchase’ canine people anyway. Rhody does not even know what money is.
I was purchased. I cost four hundred dollars. The guy I live with said I was “maybe sort of worth it”.
His wife would have wanted more purebred border collies after Chess, her favorite, died, so that’s what the guy I live with did.
How much did you pay for the guy you live with?
He cost $8.43. “Worth every penny”, he said.
Yes, of course, . . . that is what ‘he’ said. However, I know how canine people are. You would have paid many billion trillion gazillion gargantuzillion dollars.
I guess.
” a place just to the north of here where no one picks up anything. It’s pretty gross.”
Seen yesterday: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-30225-7#citeas
“Contamination of public parks by dogs is a potential source of conflict among park users, causing “tragedy of the commons” problems.”
This isn’t a public park, it’s a waste land. Literally. We have to be careful where we walk.
I have nothing to say. The world is gone to pot with fragranced poop bags! And, to add to the craziness – as Tony says above – most dog people “swing it and fling it” so that many walkways are littered with poop bags, blasted fragrant poop bags.
The guy I live with says fragrance is everywhere. There’s often perfume, or something, in the garden that’s so strong he can’t even go outside.
The trash bags are gone; he gave them to a neighbor.
” fragrance is everywhere”
There is a wonderful book:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/302507/nose-dive-by-harold-mcgee/“
That looks interesting, though the guy I live with is so ODed on “fragrance” it might make him crazy.
We just got a blast of perfume that could only be described as insanely strong.
Mee-yow Mani our nayburr next door inn buildin usess Lavendur stinky garbage bagss!! “WHY???” wee meow?? Soon as BellaSita takess our garbage go gargabe room she iss gaggin from stink! Wee new yore stinky nayburr wuud like trash bagss!
Like Mistur Paddy wee sick of smelly poop bagss thrown on ground! UCKY!!!!!!!!
Now to yore garden: youss’ did FURABULUSS!!! It lookss REELLY guud Mani an Guy!! Wee are sorry Cactus did not make it. Furry sorry….
An wee are so happy yore Snowdropss an other flowerss are doin well.
Beeuteefull flowerss!
Wee have snow!
***purrss*** BellaDharma an (((hugss))) BellaSita Mum
Thanks; the garden is kind of brownish, and most things are way behind schedule. It’s 9C here, with 16% humidity, but the soil is still frozen in a lot of places in the garden. (The guy I live with says this is unbelievable.)
And, oh, well, the bags went to a different neighbor. The bags smell really bad, but I guess some people don’t mind it.
Mee-yow those scented bagss are pew-trid smellin Mani!!
See Hu’manss nosess are not like ourss….well there ARE xceptionss like BellaSita an Guy!!! Thanxfullee 😉
An iss still beelow freezin here an chilley an tryin to snow….. **sighss**
It’s sort of nice, here. It didn’t rain like they said it might.
Pee S: Mani your fotoss are lovelee…sorry mee furgot to meow that to you! ❤
Thanks. It’s from all the work I do in the garden.
You due look meowsculur fore sure Mani!!! 😉
Thanks; I am.
It truly makes no sense to try to perfume up a garden. My gosh, it Already has all the best natural ingredients…starting with the soil and then each plant has such a unique scent. Cannot fathom why trash bag manufacturers thought perfumizing was a good idea. The man you live with is right…the world has indeed gone mad.
Your spring bulbs and early plants are a lot farther than ours are. Saw my first crocus yesterday. Seeing it left me practically giddy for more slices of spring.
The guy I live with says the perfume in question is so strong it makes him ill. Dizzy and so on. He doesn’t mind perfume, at all (he still has a small bottle of Ysatis by Givenchy that his wife liked), but perfume you can smell hundreds of feet away is obviously far too strong.
One day there was a phone guy here, and, naturally, the guy I live with had to trade “war stories” with him. They were standing out in the front yard and there was a blast of perfume, and the guy I live with thought the phone guy was going to pass out. Which is saying quite a bit, since when you go into a lot of houses you encounter some pretty powerful odors. (And income has nothing to do with it, by the way.)
The Ace Hardware trash bags aren’t perfumed and maybe he’ll get some of those, though he decided he really doesn’t need “contractor bags”.
The guy I live with said it’s supposed to be over 60 here today and he wonders if even that will melt the ice here.
He also says no one should have written that 2018 article he linked to, about Denver winters, because winters became much worse after that.
But maybe it will rain this weekend, like they say.
We’re not holding our breath on the rain forecast but it sure sounds like a worthy thing to wish for.
The guy I live with says weather dot com is a lot more pessimistic about the chances for rain, but then, the forecasts have been greatly exaggerating the amount of precipitation here for quite some time.
It would still be nice. Rain. Sigh.
Rain in Denver? Bwahahahahahaha.
I know, right? They say snow for later this week, though; the day after it gets to 66F.
Yes, we inadvertently acquired some of the scented trash bags (disgusting) and also scented laundry detergent, early in the days of having groceries selected and picked up curbside. Had to give all of it away. One difference between these disgusting scents and the lovely perfume the person you live with treasures is petroleum based chemical ingredients vs the organic ingredients in perfume. What baffles me is why suddenly consumers are thought to want nastily scented products.
Healthy dogs have a delightful scent.
Ceci
It’s a complete mystery to both of us. The guy I live with wonders why the box wasn’t marked with a sign, like “reeks strongly”, though a lot of people today wear so much “fragrance” maybe they no longer have a sense of smell.
Scented laundry detergent is the bane of the guy I live with’s life. The smell from next door, laundry hanging outside, is “like sticking your head in a box of detergent and trying to breathe”. All day long, almost every day.
The guy I live with read that as people get older, they sometimes lose their sense of smell, which might account for some of it.
(The other mystery here is why WordPress no longer sends us notifications of comments, but that’s another story.)
Last week I was grocery shopping with my husband and he reached out to grab a box of scented kitchen trash bags. I wrested the box from his hands and reminded him about the sickening, stomach-turning odor they emanate. Several years ago I made the mistake of buying a box of scented bags, and I’ll never forget the experience of trying the get the godawful smell out of our little travel trailer after I opened the bag. Lesson learned!
The guy I live with says it’s amazing that people even tolerate this stuff, though maybe a lot of them have lost their sense of smell, somehow. The Ace Hardware brand bags don’t smell; at least the ones he gets.
I don’t know about the book he got, though, except that he’s pretty unhappy about it, and yet too lazy to return it. It’s in a plastic bag with baking soda and some ground coffee, too.
And then around noon, today, the guy I live with was out in the front yard, and his neighbors’ car pulled into their driveway and when the car door opened I was afraid the guy I live with was going to pass out from the perfume or cologne or whatever, from fifty feet away.
No rain Mani?? Wee have a bit of snow here…not alot a inch or two….still furry chilley cold!
No rain, no snow; nothing. It’s just gloomy, dry, and chilly. Above freezing, but still chilly.
Seemss like this was one of THE gloomiest Winterss efurr that mee an BellaSita Mum can reememburr Mani! UCKY!!
It has been, here, mostly. Sunny today, though.