These Make Good Scents

Day 53: Long before the word "potpourri" came to designate those overpoweringly odorous bowls of wood chips and dyed flower petals now sold alongside scented candles, your grandmother probably made at least one of the items pictured above to put in her "dainties" drawer both for their fragrance and/or as a moth deterrent. They kept their scents much longer, as you'll see as I describe each one.

The "lavender bottles" (yes, that's what they're called) are something I made with homegrown lavender about 25 years ago and still have their fragrance, although it's faint. As complicated as they look, the process for creating them is fairly simple, although care must be taken not to break the stems, which are very brittle even when freshly picked. Pick a dozen or so spikes with long stems, tie them with heavy thread just below the flowers, then carefully bend the stems back. Weave lavender-coloured ribbon in a simple over-and-under pattern until the flower heads are entirely covered. Tie the remaining ribbon in a bow, and you're done.

A pomander is made by studding an orange with whole cloves, as tightly packed together as is possible, and then it can be placed in a net bag if desired. The orange will dry out, shrinking as much as the cloves will allow, and holding them in place. I made mine about 50 years ago, and it still perfumes my undies drawer, albeit lightly.

Last of all are rose beads, a versatile and popular Victorian-era project which can be put in with clothing or even worn as a bracelet or necklace. I made this set at least 50 years ago, and they are still fragrant. Some people say that the ones their grandma made in 1900 still have a light fragrance. They're a bit more complicated to make than the lavender bottles or the orange pomander, though. First of all, you'll need an old, rusty cast-iron frying pan and a handful of rusty nails, the rustier the better for both. Then you'll need to gather rose petals, a lot of rose petals, a huge amount of rose petals, way more rose petals than you think you'll ever need. Wild roses are best, but any strong-smelling rose will do. Grind them with a mortar and pestle if you have the tools. If not, crush them with a rock, cave-man style. Put them in the rusty frying pan with the nails and stir them up good. Every day for the next several weeks, stir them again, adding a little water if they start to dry out. Once they're thoroughly blackened, they're ready to be shaped. Roll up gobs of rose-petal mush to form balls about twice the size you want them to be when dry. Stick a round toothpick through each ball, and poke one end into a piece of styrofoam or a bowl of sand and let them dry thoroughly (give 'em a month or so). Remove the toothpicks carefully, twisting to release them from the dried petal mush. You'll lose a few, so make extra.

Any one or all of these make more scents than buying stinky potpourri!

Stages of Development

Day 52: After exploring multiple options for how to lay out "Memory Wreath," my plan is finally carved in stone...or fabric, as it were. Did I want a dark background or a light one? How many colours did I want to use? Did I want the center to be the same colour as the corners? Where did I want to put the darks, the lights? I settled on a layout I've not used before in this design: white background, two colours, darks for the outer points, the center a lighter shade of the same colour, dark in a second colour for the big triangles and inward-pointing small triangles, and a lighter shade of the second colour for the interior points. Having come that far, it's time to put together a test block! For it, I used leftover solids, and have laid a few paper pieces on the sample for the sake of illustrating. Each piece gets glue-basted around a paper piece to hold its shape while sewing them together. The paper is not removed until additional pieces are attached to all sides, and in fact are often left in until the quilt is completed. However, the finished product will not look much like the test block because I'll be using prints, and I will make the outer points in all blocks (12 total) using the same green fabric. The center will also be a green print, different from the points. The remaining points and large triangles will be made using lights and darks of the second colour. Corners and edge triangles will be white. I've started sewing the test block together, although I may not dive into making the actual quilt until after the holidays. It will be smaller than usual, lap-sized, three blocks by four.

Uncles

Day 51: Uncles! I had a favourite uncle who used to tickle me, play games with me, spin me around in circles; who read science fiction to me while I was still in a crib, who taught me algebra when other kids were struggling with long division, who took me to stay ten days with him at his duty station on Mount Rainier the summer after my father died (and thereby set the course of my life). Some uncles are just blah. Others are Special, always to be remembered with great fondness. Such was my uncle Gus. Merry loves uncles, and especially his uncle Kevin who he sees most often. Kevin gets down on the floor with him, shares his toys, tickles his tummy, and Merry soaks it up. He recognizes Kevin's car (or the sound of it, perhaps) and gets excited when Kevin pulls into the driveway. "Here comes your uncle Kevin!" I tell him, and then grab him to be sure he doesn't dash out the door (he's not allowed outside). As soon as greetings have been exchanged, the fun begins. And the one time Kevin came in and could only stay for half a minute, Merry watched at the window as he drove off, sad little cat-nephew meowing his unhappiness that uncle Kevin went bye-bye without a proper visit.

Fungal Find

Day 50: There are far too many orange or pink/orange Ramaria species in the Pacific Northwest which are almost identical in outward appearance, and my skill with the microscope is probably not good enough to sort them out, but that doesn't prevent me from admiring their graceful forms. It should be obvious why they are generically called "coral fungi," and some can be told apart by the way the tips branch (but of course that can be tricky depending on what growth phase they are in). Some are edible. Some are not. Both my conscience and my confidence keep me from temptation. In any event, as I was meandering through the ferns to reach yesterday's geocache, I passed this lovely specimen by without taking a photo, saying as I did so, "I bet I can't find it again." I should have known better, because when I put myself on auto-pilot, I invariably retrace my steps with amazing precision regardless of the terrain. After finding the cache, I began working my way back to the car. "Oh, there it is!" I said, having put my foot down on the same patch of moss I'd stepped on earlier, and even if I don't know the exact species, this fungal find was a perfect companion for my geocaching find.

Looks Like a Cache!

Day 49: I don't do a lot of geocaching these days, but when a new one popped up this morning only a few miles from home, I decided I had to go after it. "First to Find" honours can be very competitive, although there aren't a lot of contenders out here other than Kevin, but even so, I had no idea how long the notification had been out. The cache sounded fairly challenging...fallen trees to climb over, lots of logs to look under, at least according to the description...but when I got there, I discovered it was only a couple hundred feet from the path, through ferns in the kind of terrain I'm accustomed to when mushrooming. I did have to sit on one mossy log to get over it, but a damp butt is something I accept as a matter of course when I'm out in the woods. The cache was brilliantly made and quite well hidden, but my instincts had kicked in and I was fairly certain of what I would find. Look at the photo and tell me, does that look like a geocache to you?

Forming Attachments

Day 48: At some point in my illustrious career, I identified this lichen as Parmelia hygrophila, and I choose to believe that I would not have ventured out onto a limb without being 99% sure. This post, however, is not so much about one particular species, but about forming attachments, and trust me, lichens are amazingly good at it. They can grab onto almost anything: wood, rock, bone...even metal or plastic, as can easily be seen on my garden gate (above) and the vinyl siding on my house. All it takes is a film of dust and a tiny bit of texture/porosity, the latter not something one generally associates with painted surfaces. The trick to their tenacity lies in rhizines, root-like structures on the underside of their lobes. In many cases, these rhizines are too fine to be seen with the naked eye. Unlike roots, though, rhizines are not concerned with nutrient uptake. They're there solely to hang on, and if you were to try to peel this delicate Parmelia away from its metal friend, you'd be in for an argument which might surprise you with its vehemence.

All About Leftovers

Day 47: Predictably, everyone is posting photos of yesterday's Big Dinner, so since I'm short on material, I'll jump on the bandwagon to offer my twist. First off, let me say that those are popovers, not Yorkshire puddings. To the best of my knowledge, the only difference is that butter is used for popovers,, whereas meat drippings go in Yorkies, and mine were made entirely from scratch (recipe is in "Joy of Cooking"). They reheat well by being placed in a 325-degree oven for a few minutes, but keep an eye on them so they don't burn.

And Thanksgiving is all about leftovers, isn't it? For that reason, I made a 16-pound turkey which I shared only with Merry because in my opinion, the best part of the holiday is Carcass Soup. Oh, I'lll nibble bits of meat over the next few days and possibly put a little in the freezer, but every bone, every piece of gristle will be saved for the stock pot. It will be boiled for hours until the meat has the texture of wet cardboard, at which point, the crows get a feast. When congealed, the broth will have the consistency of set gelatine, thick enough to cut, and that will form the basis for a simple noodle soup. I prefer to use small shell pasta, seasoned only with salt and pepper, but you could add veggies if you wished. The remnants of a turkey this size should make about a quart and a half of gelatinized broth, hearty fare for those cold days we know are coming in January.