nefarious

american beauty berry :: buck rub :: waning asparagus 

swiss chard :: paperwhites :: japanese maple

Tis the season for those scented pinecones, you know the ones that sit in bins outside store entrances. I can smell them as soon as I open my car door in the parking lot and I hold my breath to get inside the way you do to avoid the rude smoker. I long to incinerate them with the fury of a thousand flaming suns. 

Tis also the season of having so much to notice. Trees that never have caught my eye are glorious now, unassuming bushes heavy laden with fruit. Julian alerted me to the new-sprouting paperwhites I planted exactly according to the directions. "In fall, when soil temps are 60F or lower," the book said. But the book didn't say anything about having two weeks of damp, hot misery at the beginning of November, when the leaves blanketed the darling bulbs with cozy, coaxing goodness. Daffodils for Thanksgiving. We'll see how this goes. 

Julian also noticed this evidence of the local rut on our adolescent pecan tree. The property line between us and our neighbors creates a natural avenue through which all our deer traffic travels, and the poor little tree can't do much about where it stands. We're probably going to lose that whole branch, a third of our tree. 

This got me thinking...

My current deer/critter repellant is nothing more than weather-proof granules saturated with cinnamon and clove oil. Hmmm. If I hate those pinecones as much as I do, how much more so might an animal with an even more sensitive schnoz hate them? 

I want those pinecones. I need those pinecones. But how will I get them home without contaminating my car? 

I will ship them parcel post. I will order them via carrier pigeon. I will walk the two miles to the nearest offending vendor and kick the bag of the nefarious things all the way home.