Potpourri

Mike's mom loves to give things to us. It's kind of peculiar, really. When Mike and I were dating she'd regularly bestow random items on him, but now that we're getting married she wraps them and calls them wedding or shower gifts.

The things she gets are rather random. I'm not sure if she just collects things as they go on clearance or if she has some rationale for the things she gets, but normally it's a bag of unrelated things. Here's what she gave me today:

- a set of orange, daisy-shaped magnets
- a magnetic notepad
- a green pen
- a box of note papers...they're kind of like post-it notes, but not sticky and all sitting in a box
- a small hairbrush
- a small, decorative metal box
- a bag of potpourri

She said the potpourri could go in the box. At first I planned to take it to my office, but then I was afraid that some of my lower-functioning students might try to eat it or something, so instead I poured some into the box and planned to put it on the TV here.

Now, I've never resorted to potpourri for my air-freshening needs. I'm a big fan of scented candles and incense instead. So even though I'd seen potpourri before, this was my first up-close-and-personal experience handling it.

And I have to ask, what the hell is potpourri, anyway? I mean, you can tell by looking at it that it comes from a plant, but man. It's so weird. There's leaves and shavings and pieces of bark and bits of pine cone and some kind of pod. Plus some of the bits were a shade of teal not found in nature.

So I Wiki'ed it. And apparently it is dried plant parts, either naturally scented or dyed and sprayed with an artificial scent.

I have plans to bash one of the pods open with a hammer to see what's inside. The rest of it will sit fragrantly on top of my TV until it goes stale or one of the cats tries to eat it. It's a toss-up which will come first.