What's that smell?

Hello dear reader. We'll get to the art first...the story later.
So as you can see I have posted here my landscape WIP. It's going to be another sunrise picture much like the other ones from that series that can be found on my website.
Like every piece of art there are ugly stages. This is the very rudimentary and exceptionally ugly stage. My landscapes, as a rule, always start out like this and are ugly enough that I always question what the heck it is I'm doing. Dive in head first, I say.
I've marked off certain areas where there will be branches and significant enough changes in colour and value and a little scribbly spot in the bottom right corner for my signature. That's my note to myself to not colour that spot really dark as I found out with a previous piece that signing on dark colours can be a messy business indeed.
I like doing landscapes because I don't have to be so slavish to reference material and can generally fudge around quite bit which lets me be creative and still (hopefully) come up with an appealing work. So right now it's not looking particularly appealing but by Wednesday there will be more completed and, although it may still look ugly, it'll be well on it's way.

So just what is that smell? For those of you that live in the country and don't have the benefit of city water you will understand the importance of maintaining a healthy septic tank/ system. For those that don't know what the bejeezus I'm talking about a septic tank is where your shower water, dishwasher water, laundry water and *ahem* toilet water goes when it makes it's hasty retreat down the drain. It also needs to be pumped out from time to time depending on how many people are using it and the size of the tank itself. This week-end the other half and I found out that our septic tank was ill...and throwing up.
I had done laundry on Friday night and the following morning, while getting ready for the banquet, the other half came upstairs and said that the laundry room was partially flooded. Gadzooks! Upon examination of the scene I deduced it had overflowed out of the drain pipe for the washer. It's just a blockage, we assumed, and snaked the drain. "Stuff" came out on the snake and we thought all was (maybe??) well. Alas, it was not and the septic tank threw up again in the laundry room...and brought stuff with it. I have a very strong stomach and my other half does not and at this point he was fed up, and feeling ill himself. I cleaned up what I could without tossing my cookies and then promptly cleaned up and changed my clothes.
We decided to go to the banquet and worry about it on sunday. Well, on sunday the laundry room had acquired an odour similar to that of an outhouse. The septic tank was full, very full. We also discovered that it costs substantially more to have someone come out on a sunday to clean up such a mess. I will, in the interest of it being polite, spare you the details of said cleaning but it wasn't pretty.
The lesson learned is that a septic system is a tempermental beast and that you must always obey the septic system. If it says it's full, don't feed it more. Just don't.