hot August nights in November

Brugmansia is a flower i associate with the accumulated heat of summer but here it is November and i've had a handful of blooms 6 nights in a row. I've been gathering them to hang so they inhale their narcotic breaths into a tray of fat. Enfleurageing their lemon meringue sweetness. This is the only way to capture this elusive fragrance. When the fat has absorbed all the intoxicating exhalations it can hold, it gets washed with perfumer's grade alcohol and viola, i have brugmansia in a bottle.

This process i started during summer when the whites bells would hang from the branches by the dozens. Then the earth turned. The shadows grew long like chilly fingers across the grass. Then it was the night before frost. Out comes the shovel and big bad bruggie gets moved into the glasshouse. He pouted for a week or so; all those roots disturbed. And i wondered if he would indeed be able to finish what he started to say, with those 30some immature buds..

 He's still talking!

knee deep in May

We've had lot's of rain! But also good amounts of sun so the roses are still full of fragrance. Plants that produce oil (and color) need lot's of sun and water; fragrance molecules and color pigments take extra energy for the plant to manufacture. 

So far, so great this year.

Today i'm distilling Rose Water batch #3 &  finishing the Narcissus enfleurage by scooping it out of the tray & washing it with alcohol; i think i have a bit of extrait left from last year to add back in.

There's the daily harvest of Mock Orange to gather, now that they have dried off. These will get ground with salt into a paste.

IF it doesn't rain more today perhaps i can gather some honeysuckle that's not soggy. : )
 But as i type this the sky darkens... : (

And then there's the perfume bench to sit at and work on mods...

Never an unscented moment around here.

bed of flowers

I have been amusing myself with the art & practice of enfleurage, with those flowers that do not lend themselves to distillation. (Or with those flowers that do distill but just wanting another path of amusement.) So far i think my greatest success has been with the Hyacinth.

It's a long drawn out process that for me can take 6 months or so as sometimes i only attend to it when i think of it. But i am in no hurry; my comfort zone is in the slow lane through life.

First i melt a thin layer of palm fat or coconut shortening in a glass dish & let this harden. Then just add flowers. Thick, waxy flowers like hyacinth & tuberose i can actually leave for 2 to 3 days, until they get wilty. You don't want to give mold the upper hand. Less substantial flowers like the ginger lily & honeysuckle come off in 24 hours. In warmer weather the trays will need to be in the refrigerator least the flowers sink into soft fat/oil. I've done this with narcissus, easter lily, hyacinth, ginger lily, honeysuckle and tuberose. I'm holding over some lilac and some lily of the valley from last year that need strengthening so i'll add to them this spring. This summer i hope to add peony to the list.

 After the pomade is saturated; meaning when i have run out of flowers or it's season has finished, i scoop it into a jar & cover with organic grape alcohol. Then the jar goes through months of alternating heat & cold to wring the scent out of the fat & into the alcohol. I'm sure i could speed this part up but...i don't.

As you can see i don't always end up with much 'juice' but this particular batch brought us to our knees. To my nose there is no fragrance more exalting than the voice of  heaven funneled straight through a flower's throat and to blend it with anything else would be sacrosanct.  OK,  maybe a bit of subliminal ambergris to anchor it. Even though this particular one was still whispering on the scent strip after 24 hours,  they are too ephemeral / ethereal to create a sillage down the hallway. So i have arrived at the conclusion that the best way to injoy these is to spray them on my pillow at night and they have enough presence in the morning to 'wake me in the garden.'

princess prunus mume

I have a pet tree. She will probably spend her whole life in her pot so i can drag her into the glasshouse so i can behold her when she blooms. That's the best i can do for an alter. Not for her the rude lashings of rain and snow that leave her petals sodden & limp. As for me i am too selfish to share one flower's worth of that knee-buckling cinnamon-sugar-confection fragrance with the wind and clouds and even birds.

This is one of the rare flowers in the garden that i don't pimp. I make no attempts to wring the scent out of her by distillation or enfleurage.  I injoy her scent just as she is, in her own hour of the year.

winter tuberoses

We overshot Christmas. I say 'we' as i was driving. There were two plants that decided to throw up flower stalks in early November.  Instead of moving them into the warmer house when i lifted them, as opposed to the cooler glasshouse, i forestalled their opening. (You will find the practice of tuberoses for Christmas in the type of gardening books that crumble and lose pages if you are not careful while reading. Such ideas are antique and i think due for a revival.)

Even though i learned my lesson in temperature and timing, i am not going to mind Anytime a tuberose wants to bloom. Indeed, in the quiet aftermath of holiday hoopla, they garner more attention. The odd time of year that these are choosing to bloom only adds to the mystic and to have their decadent scent wafting around the house at night, when all other fragrance is with Persephone, is commanding. This is not background music.

Twas back in August when i started the tuberose enfleurage tray (the process of laying down flowers in 'fat', to absorb the fragrance) and each night i pick the blooms that have opened, at the moment of highest decibels and lay them down to give up their magic.