While I love all seasons including Winter – Winter lacks in the area of green/flowery life.  Well, this year I decided why not grow some of those gorgeous paper whites and have a pot of them in the house all winter.  I just knew for sure that this would satisfy my need of green growth which it did however . . . how is it that this gorgeous flower yields such a foul scent?

Imagine my excitement of watering and watching my great pot of green stems growing and then the oh so awaited display of flowers appear to leave me wondering what the heck this foul smell was in the kitchen.  After standing there smelling the air for several minutes trying to identify what and where this smell is coming from, I realized the scent must be coming from our cat’s litter box which didn’t make sense because I had just scooped it so why would the smell be waffling all the way into the kitchen?  Gosh maybe my cat isn’t drinking enough water which is making her urine more pungent – oh gross!  To my surprise of arriving at the litter box it didn’t smell in that room – huh interesting – back to the kitchen to figure this out.  Now I’m feeling like Walter Matthau in the Grumpy Old Men movie where Jack Lemmon places a dead fish into Walter’s car and Walter goes to drive it and says “Shoe Wee what’s that smell…ohhhh man what’s that smell?”  LOL – Love that movie!  Well as you can figure it was the gorgeous paper whites permeating our home with this awful cat urine scent.   I still can’t figure out how it is that these gorgeous flowers yield this awful foul scent.

To make matters worse, I couldn’t part with this pot of stink that I put so much love and care into.  It became a daily discussion within the household.  Michael couldn’t understand how I could keep such stink in our house especially considering I have a real hang up with smells.  I couldn’t explain my rational other than they were so pretty, it gave me a daily reminder that spring will arrive, and I couldn’t part with this green life I had created.

I have 10 more bulbs in the fridge waiting to transform themselves into stinky life however I’m thinking I’ll wait and plant them in the spring and display them on our deck.