from the hedgerow

Thus far it has been a mild winter and the diminutive popcorn-like buds of the winter honeysuckle ( Lonicera fragrantissima ...notice how this one gets 'fragrance' in it's name!) are popping open 2 months early. One little shrub will waft across an open expanse and hook your olfactory nerve endings before you get a complete thought in your head. It's on the tip of my tongue to go ahead and declare I prefer this one over the rampant viney one that opens later in spring and engulfs trees and sheds (not a complaint out of my mouth) but to be fair I should wait until I have them both at my nose.

This little one blooming now is a mannerly shrub although I do notice the birds have spread it around nicely, at least in this corner of the world; Piedmont NC. In fact, everything about this one is more mannerly...may I say 'well-bred' ? It lacks the backnote of 'cream' which lends its viney cousin a sultry, if not wanton scent nor does it stoop to exuding and dripping  its nectar by the drop onto your tongue.

 It's too high class for subterfuge; It carries the clear note of muguet.

(I stand a good chance of being two-faced later in the spring 

when the viney one opens)

                                                                                  

plant hunting at high speeds

Looking for a specific plant at 55 mph on a country back road where it's hard to pull over is an exciting challenge in December, especially as  most plants have given up their tall flower stalks. Recognizing plant communities is the key and when I started seeing the thick felted leaves of Mullen and and scraggly Goldenrod, I knew the one-inch high, emerald green rosettes of Evening Primrose would be in the gang. This sport of mine makes my husband nervous as I have little compunction on the rules of where to make a shoulder for myself and pull over.  After zooming past a mile or so of plant groups (but slowing down enough to irritate the drivers on my tail) I found a wide enough spot to relax him.

As I step out of the car the sound of cattle lowing reaches my ears and distant, repeated riffle shots. Yes, we are out in the country. I walk back and search the ground and it's like my whole energy field is vibrating & open to receive one signal; but my heart still takes a little leap when my eyes find the familiar circle of leaves. All of me smiles.
I cajole three pups into the trunk of my car to take home and release into the yard.

Next summer they will grow tall and sometime in August I'll start harvesting the flowers. Despite the name, for me this will be an early morning task. I'll take them back up to the kitchen, grind them with a little salt in the mortar and pestle and save them in a glass jar in the fridge until I have enough to distill into Evening Primrose Flower Water. My skin has never felt anything like it. Soft soft soft with a sheer electrical aliveness. Well worth my troubles, which are in reality, my joys.

Whale Encounter

my Grandmother's silver perfume flask with funnel, handed down to me

Unless you are a merperson, this one doesn't grow in the garden but if you are a connoisseur  of fragrance, you will want this one on your olfactory 'nose shelf'.
This is from my diary 2008...

I received a small sample of Ambergris today...that most fabled and elusive of all perfume ingredients, from the Perfumer's Apprentice. I could smell it before I opened the package! (No whales were harmed) I put a small dab on the back of my hand; as from skin is the truest way to 'sample' a fragrance. This was only a 3% tincture but it lasted for  h o u r s... taking me on journey back into childhood. Somehow this was familiar to my cellular memory, but it was beyond me to remember when I might have whiffed this before. I turned off my rational thinking and went immediately to my Grandfather's stone farm house in northern Virginia..a house that took a canon ball during the civil war. But no, wait; the scene shifted a few miles across town to my great Aunt Peggy's farm; the horsie auntie...the auntie who started the Gold Cup Steeple Chase race in Warrenton, Va. Yes...here it is.


 If the word 'patina' has a smell to it; this is it. Vignettes flashed through my thoughts in no particular order...great Uncle Connie's riding boots in the closet; the ones he wore riding in the Olympic Games (1929?). There are layers of horse, root cellar, pipe tobacco, saddles cleaned with saddle soap after every ride, blue shadows from The Shenandoah Mts, a mustiness but not unpleasant, perhaps from the heavy drapery  in an upstairs bedroom that hasn't been drawn in decades. This was the fragrance of a bygone way of life; where there is more space between the clock ticks. I spent the afternoon as a ten year old again, in her father's family's fold in time.

Drinking Fine Art

To start out honestly, I did not grow the Agarwood in my own garden, but I did, the roses that I co-distilled it with. What I ended up with was 'Oud & Rose Water'. One afternoon I pulled out the bottle and added, 0 say 5 drops to a cup of warm water and took a sip. I was stunned. The experience immediately flashed through me that here I was drinking a piece of Fine Art, and/or an antique that would sell through Christies at $25,000.

The two components were both separate and melded and my tongue could detect both (or all 3?) but my brain/psyche was reeling from the experience of drinking something hyper-extraordinary. The history of Agarwood is ancient, itself, tied to ritual and that is precisely what I was tasting. As I sipped through the afternoon I felt that each time I should be kneeling in reverence; the experience very clearly reached across 'mere taste' and included the richly accumulated psychic energy of Oud & Agarwood of many cultures.

The roses? .. added a sheer note of elegant sweetness.

Later in the day I stooped to google 'agarwood tea' and found references to longevity and health. Of course...one would expect no less.

ze Grand Duke

the Jasmine sambac 'Grand Duke' pushed out one last bud by summer's end and, pampered in the greenhouse, it  slowly opened...revealing his blue blood.