Posts

Showing posts from April, 2009

A Celebration of the Perfumes of the Earth and the Art of Those Who Love Them

Image
Aztec Gold Plumeria aka Fragipani Natural perfumers have an innate love of nature, flowers and the beauty of this planet. I say that after years of observing the posts by them on a Yahoo group devoted to natural perfumery . Most like to get their hands "in the soil" and grow herbs and flowers so that they can enjoy the harvest as tasty food or as an ingredient in a perfume they create. I'm one of them. I've been a gardener for many, many years. I wrote a paper on organic gardening for a class back in 1972, and later wrote for Organic Gardening magazine. Passionate about herbs, fragrant plants, veggies and tree crops, I've grown plants in Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, New York, New Jersey and Florida - talk about spanning growing zones! The photo of the white and gold plumeria above, the variety known as "Aztec Gold" was taken in 2003 in my garden. I've been tincturing the flowers for years, obtaining a beautifully golden fragrant extract th

White Sandalwood Oil + Full Moon in Libra = A Perfumer's Dream

Image
I'm overwhelmed with the sultry, woody, spicy, balsamic, heavy, transcendent scent of the bottles of Santalum album, aka White Sandalwood essential oil that I've been pouring for the members of the Natural Perfumers Guild. Tonight there's a Full Moon in Libra, the sign of beauty, and sandalwood is in the Pantheon of glorious, gorgeous, sought-after rare and elusive beautiful raw aromatics for fine natural perfumery. My sign is Libra, so I feel the utterly exalting power of this historic, deep, balsamic oil. Being a rather sloppy "pourer" of raw materials, I managed to get about 2mls of this oil on either my hands or in the pouring tray, where it was easy to recover. So I just got to schmering it, to use a little Yiddish, in honor of Pesach, and I'm in heaven! I also rubbed some on my shoulder, which was yanked out a bit today playing with the huge puppy I'm fostering, and the pain just melted away. Or maybe I'm just melting. I'm as tranquil as that