Thursday, June 26, 2008

Eau de Chicken Manure

We’ve gone organic with our outdoor fertilizer. After reading an article that all but pegged the rise in childhood leukemia cases to the use of common lawn fertilizers (no joke … certain ingredients are linked back to ‘Agent Orange’ and other crazy stuff!), we switched cold-turkey … or should I say ‘cold-chicken’(I’ll explain shortly).
We’d been moving in the direction of organic gardening treatments, but this article made us move much faster. Fast forward to this past week … a well-known lawn care company was going door-to-door, offering a special introductory offer for lawn services, including fertilizing. They offered an organic alternative, so we decided to take them up on the lawn fertilization portion … just to see if it made a difference.
They came today. There’s a nice breeze, so I have the windows open, and – as I made my way down the stairs – noticed a stench that I couldn’t quite place. There’s no one else in the house except me (I’ve showered and – as far as I can tell – do not have a stench) and the fresh air is blowing through the windows …. oh, oh, wait … that’s not exactly fresh … that’s the smell of … chicken manure? By the way, chicken manure is the organic treatment. So, now we’ll have to see if we ruffle the feathers (no pun intended) of the neighbors with our, um, au naturale fertilizer!
By the way, I have the upstairs office window open as well … and just heard a young voice, fairly close to our house, say, “Ooooh, it smells like dog poo!” Oh my … please don’t let that be our house to which they’re referring. I’m off to get the mail, which will allow me the covert opportunity to investigate the smell from outside!