Inspired by Christmas

I have been thinking lately about the winter holidays and trying to figure out what I want to do. This is my first year without kids in the house (hopefully none of them will show up on the doorstep homeless any time soon!), so I wondered if I would even want to go to the trouble to put up a Christmas tree. Then, I thought about how wonderful the tree smells and how it makes my vacuum cleaner smell better when I vacuum up the pine needles. You see, if you have dogs, inevitably, your vacuum cleaner spews out smells of dog butt, wet dog, and dog drool whenever you vacuum because of all the dog butt, wet dog hair, and dog drool you have vacuumed up in the past. It really dampens the "fresh" feeling that you're supposed to get from cleaning.

Then, it dawned on me. Rosemary leaves look sort of like pine needles. I like the smell of rosemary. I have rosemary in my garden. So, I went and cut a sprig of rosemary and stripped off the leaves and vacuumed them up. Oh, it smelled so much better! But, then, as I kept vacuuming, it really smelled like rosemary in my house. For a long time. Don't get me wrong, the overly strong rosemary was definitely preferable to dog smells. However, next time, I will just use a little bit of rosemary. Oh! or possibly, I could vacuum up some lavender. I bet that would smell nice. Or maybe sage. And, it dawns on me. I do have douglas fir pine trees in my yard. I could just use those for the real scent I was craving in the first place...