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Really strange smell after raking leaves off the lawn.

roop298roop298 Posts: 4
in Problem solving
One for the hard core's I think.
I raked the fallen leaves off the lawn this morning. Since then I've had this really strange smell follow me around.
It smells like old stale thinners.  (the only thing I can compare it to).  It's not cat piss.  Now I do get wild animals in this frequency order: Birds, squirrels, cats, foxes.  The last time I dragged the smell in I thought I'd spilled some old thinners on myself (i;m a casual painter) and the smell lasted for about 2 mnths.
Anyone any ideas?

Posts

  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    Like white spirit?
  • roop298roop298 Posts: 4
    any kind of thinner. stale ones at that.
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    edited November 2021
    Could you have trodden in some kind of mushroom or fungus on the lawn? It might be worth going back out tomorrow and having a look at what's in the grass and elsewhere around. Fungi can have astonishing scents, esp if you mashed some by mistake with foot or rake. They cause no harm to grass. Are you in the UK?
  • roop298roop298 Posts: 4
    It's more moss than lawn.  It's overshadowed by two apple trees that do go mouldy on the tree but I try to collect them when they fall.
    In Blighty; sheff to be exact.
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    In daylight get down close to the ground, have a good sniff around, disturb the soil a bit, follow your nose and I daresay you might find the source.
  • roop298roop298 Posts: 4
    Fire said:
    In daylight get down close to the ground, have a good sniff around, disturb the soil a bit, follow your nose and I daresay you might find the source.

    What?
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    edited November 2021
    If you go out into the garden and try and track down the source to the spot where the scent is strongest you may well find the specific cause - fungi, something rotting, something dead, rubbish, poo or something else.
  • LunarSeaLunarSea Posts: 1,923
    Wood lice often emit a strong smell when disturbed. If there were enough of them that could maybe account for it. Just picked this off a factsheet - "Woodlice make a distinctive bad smell by excreting ammonia through their exoskeleton."
    Clay soil - Cheshire/Derbyshire border. 

    I play with plants and soil and sometimes it's successful
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    edited November 2021
    My guess is that it’s fox pee … they mark their territory at regular sites, especially in the autumn … the mating season starts any day now. 
    The smell of fox urine is strong and quite acrid and will linger and permeate the air around the spot they use for quite a while … and of course they will revisit and re-mark regularly. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





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