What is the Perfume Project?

This blog is a constantly evolving forum for thoughts on perfume, perfume-making, plants (especially orchids and flora of the Pacific Northwest) and life in general. It started out chronicling the adventures of Olympic Orchids Perfumes, established in July 2010, and has expanded in other directions. A big part of the blog is thinking about the ongoing process of learning and experimentation that leads to new perfumes, the exploration of perfumery materials, the theory and practice of perfume making, the challenges of marketing perfumes and other fragrance products, and random observations on philosophy and society. Spam comments will be marked as such and deleted; any comments that go beyond the boundaries of civil discourse will also be deleted. I am grateful to all of you, the readers, who contribute to the blog by commenting and making this a truly interactive perfume project.

Thursday, July 6, 2017

MORE FIRES AND PECULIAR PHENOMENA OF NORTHWEST CULTURE

Just a week after the trees in back of our house caught fire, we had another fire at the front of our property, where the woods and field border the road. One thing I need to mention is that people in our corner of the Pacific Northwest are obsessed with fireworks. For months before every fireworks-heavy holiday (New Years and Independence Day), tents pop up selling fireworks with names like “TNT”, “Shock and Awe”, and the most appropriate of all, “Redneck Fireworks Stand”. The local populace starts setting off all sorts of explosions a week before the holiday; on the actual date it sounds like a war zone from morning until well after midnight. People must stockpile fireworks because they also set them off whenever a Seattle sports team wins.

There is always the occasional mishap when fireworks are set off by people in various stages of pre-adolescence, adolescence, machismo, and/or intoxication. This year, houses and cars were set on fire, fingers were blown off, and our bamboo grove was set on fire. 

We were calmly having guests over for dinner in the midst of continuous explosions large and small when there was a commotion up by the road. Michael went up to investigate and found a  section of our bamboo grove on fire, with flames flying up to the sky and spreading like wildfire (no pun intended) through the leaves and dry grass below the bamboo. 

The culprits were two teenage boys and their goofy father, who had shot off some sort of explosive device that was “supposed to go up, but went off to the side”. I did not witness the firefighting operation in person, but was told by those who did, that someone in the group was trying to carry water to the fire in an orange bucket full of bullet holes caused by its having been used for target practice (probably the bucket in the photo, which I took from a distance). Imagine the comic effect of a boy carrying water in a bucket spouting water out of multiple holes, ending up empty by the time he got it to the fire!

Eventually, mostly with the help of Michael and our friends, the whole bumbling crowd managed to get some water to the fire through a sort of bucket brigade, and finally through a hose. There’s no serious damage, just a lot of charred grass, some dead bamboo, and some semi-traumatized teenagers who were abjectly hauled to the house to apologize to those of us who hadn’t even realized that all this was going on.


I hope this is the last fire for a while!

[Photos are mine]

8 comments:

  1. Sorry you have so much trouble with the fires, sometimes teenagers and their dads do not realize that fire and dry wooded areas or fields do not mix. Luckily this is the last holiday for a while so maybe you will not have any more problems with people setting off fireworks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nelle, You're right - I think everyone used up their fireworks on Tuesday night!

      Delete
  2. Geez. You're having all the luck this summer, huh? Our neighbors are marginally more careful with their fireworks, but Texans adore illegal fireworks just as much as anyone.
    The flaming tree thing is scary. I meant to respond to that post but my comment was eaten and I was too lazy to retype at the time. We have a huge sycamore that grows into the power lines almost every year. The electric co-op sends someone out to trim about 10" of charred and shriveled leaves off and it holds until the next high wind or growth season. I'm glad we haven't had your experience yet, especially since they ran the line through the tree directly above our propane tank.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Liz, your sycamore tree running through the power lines above the propane tank sounds a little scary. I didn't know that there were uninsulated power lines in other parts of the country. It sounds like Seattle and Texas have a lot in common what with the sizzled trees and the love of fireworks!

      Delete
  3. Lets hope the fire emergencies are over although in a few years with global warming, the Pacific NW should feel like the Mojave desert!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anne, small grass fires like this are not ucommon here in summer - it's just different when it happens near your house!

      Delete
  4. It seems we'll have soon a new perfume in the collection"Fireworks and bamboo"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Frederic, Good idea - fireworks and bamboo perfume!

      Delete