“A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”
Emily Dickinson

author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

actually writing blog

nosing around on a monday morning
Mon 2014-10-27 23:48:19 (in context)

Today's farm work was odoriferous! That's a fancy word that means smelly. Not unpleasantly smelly, but noticeable, certainly.

The bulk of it was spent harvesting onions and shallots. Mostly I was on pitchfork duty. My team went ahead to loosen up the soil so that the next team could pull up the onions more easily. Then there was a team that came with clippers and snipped off most of the greens and the roots, leaving just the bulb to be packed away into cartons.

There were four rows of this process going on, which meant that while I was pitchforking the next row of onions I was stepping on the piled up, cast off greens of the previous row. Which we had to clean up when we were done.

The entire world got to smelling like onions, y'all.

We had a little time after this was done before lunch would be ready, so I wound up in the barn loft packing dried mint away into paper bags. That was a very pleasant smelling job. I didn't mind one bit leaving the farm smelling like mint, peppermint, orange mint and pineapple mint. I did mind the bits of dried mint twig that wound up inside my shirt, socks, and pants.

Then I went home. As I let myself in, my nose delivered a pleasant reminder that me that I'd started a crock pot full of red beans going that morning. I chopped up a bunch of onions, celery, and peppers--all from the farm--and tossed them in along with some parsley from the porch and some thyme still good in the refrigerator, and then I tucked myself into bed for a nap.

And that was my odoriferous Monday.

My hope is that we'll finish painting the shower room tomorrow, or I'll be able to figure out how to use the tub without ruining our careful masking tape job. It would be nice to reduce my personal odoriferousness down to a manageable level.

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