Sawdust to sawdust
Tuesday November 13th 2018, 10:12 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family,Life

With all six kids gathered round (thank you Frontier for selling $87 Atlanta-Salt Lake no-luggage round trips) Dad offered a Christmas present dear to his heart: four amaryllis bulbs each, and not just any amaryllises but ultra-large mother bulbs. For us two coming-birthday girls it was six.

Good thing my luggage on the way there had included a giant tub of extra-ripe dried apricots from Andy’s Orchard for the folks so I didn’t take an underseat suitcase and I had some space freed up for the way home.

(Hey, Andy, if you see this? My brother echoed my dad’s reaction: “Those are *gooooood*!” He definitely wanted to know where to find more and I was happy to pass your website on to him.)

But the bag. It was still just a carry-on and I was sure the TSA would want to look at those. They definitely did. I seemed harmless, but that way-overstuffed suitcase had to come open even as I was telling the guy what he’d seen on the screen were.

“Those ARE big amaryllis bulbs!” he said in wonder, holding one high for the other agents to see. Clearly he was familiar with such. He dug through and pulled out each of the others in turn just to be sure, though–his peers were present–which is how I found out that the sawdust the bulbs were bagged with could pepper-shake out all over everything. That makes sense: bulbs are living things and need to breathe.

I may have bought them second-hand on swap.com and the like for $5-$10 each, but still: those were my cashmere sweaters he was freely coating with that stuff, and my favorites to boot. Y’know, what you wear to look good around your siblings and their kids.

I’d previously put them through the hand wash cycle on my Speed Queen, which didn’t shrink them any, but the higher-than-average speed of its spin meant the ends of the hairs had worked their way free and gained an angora bunny look and now those wisps of goat fur were grabbing hard onto that sawdust. Later, I could not shake it all out.

Fortunately, it turns out that washer could. Speed Queens are magical.

Just in case you ever, say, visit a lumber mill in a cashmere sweater.


1 Comment so far
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So glad the washer came through!

Those apricots are tempting; I’ll have to keep them in mind for when I feel like treating myself.

Comment by ccr in MA 11.14.18 @ 6:27 am



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