2025, Art, gardening, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Aromatherapy Times Two

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My current world is a battlefield of aromas.

My tomato and pepper plants are still putting out fruit, so I am out at the bales every day harvesting.  If you’ve ever grown tomatoes, you know that you can’t pick them without getting a very pungent smell all over your arms and hands. 

I’m also working with melting beeswax (Ukrainian eggs).  It gets on my fingers and under my fingernails.

The tomato plant smell is easily washed off (if I remember when I come in) but the beeswax smell lingers not just on my hands but on my clothing, in my hair, probably in the air.  Even after a shower, I can still occasionally recognize a whiff of it.  A couple of times the last few days I’ve noticed that the tomato smell and the beeswax smell are duking it out to be the top dog.  The beeswax always seems to win.

I don’t mind either of these aromas.  Not like patchouli.  This is an odor that I just can’t abide; in close quarters it actually makes me a little nauseous.  Since there are people who seem to like it, I’ve always assumed that it was some sort of biologic response, kind of like how Jacque can’t stand the taste of cilantro.  I haven’t found any science to back up my theory but I’m going to stick with it for now!

I’ll be done with the eggs in a couple of days and the tomatoes are slowing down, so assuming that the war of the smells will be over soon but it’s interesting while it’s going on!

Do you have a favorite aroma?  A least favorite?/

37 thoughts on “Aromatherapy Times Two”

  1. My favorite aroma is unscented, which is getting harder and harder to find.
    I go through periods of time when my brain invents odors, usually unappealing ones. (No, I am not having a stroke.) This time of year the skunks come to grub in my yard. I keep smelling them but they are not there. Right now here with Sandra I am smelling a certain odor, which is not there. I have been craving saur kraut, which I cannot eat. When I go into the kitchen I will smell it sometimes, an odor I like. This will end soon. There is a term for this, which I forget.

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  3. We had a dead mouse in the basement a few weeks ago. Now that is a repellant smell. Trouble was, we couldn’t find it though it was obviously there somewhere. Nothing you could cover that smell with that wouldn’t make it worse. Finally I located it and we could scrub the area and air out the space.

    Like Clyde, my favorite scent is unscented. Unfortunately, even unscented products have scents. They just don’t have ones they’ve named. Have you noticed the trend away from giving scents specific identities? Whereas scents once were named things like “Hibiscus” or “Sandalwood”, now they are called “Morning Mist” or “Desert Breeze”. They might all be the same smell. I wouldn’t know.

    Thankfully, Robin and I are on the same page when it comes to artificial scents. It would be hard to live with someone addicted to “air fresheners”.

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    1. I don’t like a lot of scented things as well. Sad but true the last two boxes of kitchen trash bags that I’ve purchased have been scented and I didn’t realize it until after I opened the box. One was a particularly obnoxious floral scent, and I went out of my way to not get that one again, but then managed to get a spearmint scented one, which while not as bad as the floral is still irritating. Thank goodness these bags live in the trashcan on the back porch.

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    2. Bert’s Bees says their products are unscented, to name one liar, but they reek of, I think, honey. Hand and body soaps: I have ordered unscented ones but they were scented. I have found scents that I can tolerate that fade fast.
      I used to love haying season for the smell of fresh cut hay. Now the smell of fresh cut grass. Then they come around with chemicals.
      Yes, fresh made coffee, which I make every morning but for some reason I cannot really smell very well. And bacon, but I don’t make it now. Autumn has an earthy scent I like, as does fresh turned soil.

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  4. I agree about artificial scents. They’re hard for me to tolerate and can be overwhelming.

    My favorite scents are the smell of fresh, clean air on a sweatshirt after a long hike outside on a cool autumn day; the smell of the pines, rocks, and water on the north shore; and the smell of fallen leaves after a rain shower in the woods. The smell of bergamot blooming with prairie grasses pollinating in the hot summer sun is almost intoxicating.

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  6. I agree with Krista regarding the natural scents she likes as well as food aromas such as fresh baked cookies or frying bacon. When it comes to artificial scents, I am in the unscented camp. One scent that many people like (or love) is lavender. Not me. It gives me a terrific headache. On a trip to Croatia several years back we did a day trip to the island of Hvar, where the hills are covered in lavender. Though the island was lovely, I couldn’t wait to leave even though the lavender wasn’t in full bloom. I had purchased a small bottle of lavender oil as a gift and placed the box in a zip lock bag before packing it. Unfortunately the bottle leaked and despite it being in a baggie, my suitcase reeked of it. I threw the baggie in the garage trash can (couldn’t leave it in a household wastebasket) and nearly had to toss the suitcase. It took days for the luggage to air out enough to get rid of the scent.

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    1. Agreed on the lavender. Poor Sandra loved scents, especially lavender. I developed all the issues with odors in my early 40’s. It took a big chunk out of her life.

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  7. Lavender. I keep a little bottle at my bedside when I’m suffering anxiety.
    Also, I take some along when riding along with others in a car. It calms my claustrophobic tendencies.
    Bacon is right up there.

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  8. The retaining ponds for sugar beet detritus at American Crystal Sugar in Moorhead give off a horrible smell. When I was a Freshman at Concordia, there was a substantial leak of the ponds into the Red River. Moorhead got its water from the river at that time, and I remember taking a gym class and how awful the hot shower water smelled until the beet water flowed north

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  10. Better Late Than Never, Baboons,

    I love the smell of cinnamon, bread baking, and fresh mown hay (the real stuff, not a fake smell). As others have mentioned, “unscented” is a favorite. Bees wax has a pungent odor that is built in, and it smells like honey. I have been in a bees wax candle-making facility that had a strong, strong smell that is the residue of honey. I found it overwhelming, although it is also a natural aroma with no chemicals added.

    A lot of the odors named above are also least favorites for me. Add to that the Canadian fire smoke that wafts our way became difficult to tolerate this summer.

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  11. The worst smell I have ever encountered was the smell that emanated from the stock yards in South St. Paul many years ago. It was the stench of incinerated flesh, cow hide and heaven only knows what else. Truly sickening. Fortunately, it happened rarely since the prevailing winds would blow the stench away from us. How people managed to live downwind of the stock yards, I can’t imagine.

    Several baboons have traveled widely throughout the world. Have you ever noticed that some places have a unique smell? The first time I noticed it was the evening I arrived in Moscow. Russian soaps, shampoos, and perfumes had an unmistakable – to me unpleasant – scent that was hard to get away from, especially in enclosed spaces.

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  12. i had a friend who moved to newport from bloomington in 1969. a couple of the guys had cars so we drove out to see him and asked him if the smell didnt drive him nuts. he said he didnt notice it. its true that if you sit in it long enough the horrible smell becomes an everyday every moment thing that goes unnoticed

    my favorite smells are vanilla like stuff also, almond, berry, my least favorite would be bile or singed hair

    i like the smell of tar used in roofing and blacktop
    not a favorite but i enjoy it
    also the nitrogen when rain starts falling

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  14. Well, I am seriously drenched in beeswax smell today. In addition to the regular goings on, I had quite a large splatter early this afternoon. Luckily it did not hit any eggs, but it seems to have hit just about everything else and YA informed me when she came downstairs after she was done with work that I had wax on my face as well. Sigh.

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  15. A couple of years ago, I read a book, Nose Dive by Harold McGee, a fairly fascinating but formidable (688 pages) exposition on smells and their nature and origin. I read it as an ebook and that was something of a mistake in that there were charts that in the electronic version were almost too small to read.

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  16. The aforementioned coffee, bacon, and fresh laundry off the line. I also like some of my essential oils – eucalyptus, even tea tree oil… kind of “fresh” scents, put a drop in a little water…

    One of the worst is rotting potato. Last winter I could not identify what the $%&*# that was in the basement, was afraid it was maybe a brother to Bill’s dead mouse… turned out to be a potato in the bottom of the barrel.

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  17. Slightly related: My book group read Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz. (I didn’t read it all…)

    “In clear, crisp prose, Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a picture of what it might be like to be a dog. What’s it like to be able to smell not just every bit of open food in the house but also to smell human emotions and even the passage of time?…”
    They really are pretty amazing.

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  18. I was at an art fair yesterday and walked into a booth of beeswax candles. I told the woman there that she had the best smelling booth at the art fair. Perhaps the smell gets overpowering in a small space, but in a booth in a park with lots of air circulation, it was a lovely smell.

    St. Paul used to get a wave of unpleasant odor in warm humid weather. The smell wafted in from the area around Pig’s Eye Lake, when the prevailing winds were from the east. That’s the sewage treatment facility area. I was told at the time that part of the odor was coming from a molasses factory. I thought it was called Knapp Molasses, or Syrup, or something like that. When I do searches now, though, I find nothing about any molasses factory.

    We no longer get that distinctive smell, though, no matter which direction the wind is blowing.

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