The Malodorous Aroma

I have not noticed the malodorous emanation on my side of town from the Miller re-cycling yard. I know however it exists, now and then.

When it was first set up, residents carted garden waste to the yard personally...in a vehicle.

It was an interesting experience. We would back up and empty our plastic bags onto a pile and stuff the bags into something else.

In the beginning we got free bags of compost

Once I found a huge clump of interesting roots set aside from the pile. So I brought that home. It sat in a corner of my garden for a while until I got round to examining it closer.

By the time I separated the clump. pink buds were sprouting in places. I spent hours dividing into pieces, each with its own bud. I planted dozens without having any idea what they were.

For ten or fifteen years now, I have had a display of peonies.They are magnificent
and their scent is beautiful.

Except that, buds appear and slowly they swell and the ants do their thing and finally they burst open and just at that time, almost inevitably,there's huge downpour that drives the beautiful heavy blossoms down to the ground.

I could cut them and bring them into the house. Except that, at that time of the year I am out of the house more than I'm in it and I hate to cut flowers.

Always there's a dilemma.

Some years they are pink and some years white.Apparently, it depends on the bee pollination.Which peony clump did they visit last.

I'm told peonies can live for a hundred years or longer. I believe it.

I brought home a clump of roots from the Savation Army re-cycling store once. I separated and planted them too and watched them grow. That was an experience. I had never seen anything like them before. They grew in a very weird formation. In the beginning,the leaves were like tubes. They just kept growing upwards. They weren't even green. They were an ominous copper colour.They were waist high before somebody told me what they were. Calla Lilies I thought they were something from out of space.

Anyway, back to Miller's yard. It's a massive operation. Compost has to be kept wet and turned regularly. When that's happening, depending how the wind is blowing, an odour emanates.

It's all good natural healthy stuff. Nothing to fear. You can probably still buy the compost. which doesn't smell, and various other products at the yard.

You can also see sand banks filled with dozens of tiny holes, a habitat for a particular bird species. Don't know what. Maybe a sand piper.Looked like swallows to me.

Over the years, I've often thought a gardening leaflet about stuff that shouldn't be planted might be useful for new homeowners.

A Manitoba maple for example is a weed tree. It's monstrous and ugly and by the time you realise it's not an asset, it costs hundred if not thousands of dollars to get rid of it.

Once a neighbour gave me one but I found out it was no prize in time to dig it out.

Anyway, now the municipality collects yard waste and we can't even burn our leaves any more. That was a nice nostalgic smell.

It's interesting how many people half my age like to tell me how things have changed.